George F. Will Quotes

When it comes to the separation of powers, the Constitution makes it look pretty simple: Congress makes the laws, the president enforces them and the judiciary adjudicates them. In reality, though, the lines between the branches are a little blurrier than they seem on paper.

What Obama did wrong with executive power is he tried to change the law. He tried to ignore the law. And under the Constitution, Article I, all legislative authority is vested in Congress.

In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

It has been the judiciary that has preserved the Constitution rather than the other two separated powers.

The judicial branch of the government is the least dangerous because … it has no influence over either the sword or the purse.

The filibuster is the most important check on raw Presidential power.

Rule of law has prevailed over Obama's unconstitutional executive overreach.

As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it.

Nonetheless, so whether it's unconstitutional or not [for judges to overruling presidents], I leave to others.

Our Founding Fathers created the Executive Branch to implement and enforce the laws written by Congress, and vested this power in the president.

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process.

The authority to declare war rests in Congress, not in an out-of-control president.

It is the union of independence and dependence of these branches - legislative, executive and judicial - and of the governmental functions possessed by each of them, that constitutes the marvellous genius of this unrivalled document.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

The courts are truly the least dangerous of the three branches of our government.

The courts are under the Constitution, not over it.

There is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separated from legislative power and from executive power. If it [the power of judging] were joined to legislative power, the power over life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislature if it were joined to the executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor. All would be lost if the same … body of principal men … exercised these three powers

The legislative, executive, and judicial power shall be placed in separate departments.

Congressional power has not so much been usurped by the Presidency as given up to the Presidency by Congress.

If our forefathers had wanted Congress to be the Commander in Chief, they would have said so.

The governor has led the way, but he's not an emperor. The legislature has to act. He cannot pass a bill by himself.

The people never have and never will be able to understand how the will of a majority of the House of Representatives can be set aside by the judgment of a few men on a powerful committee.

As the Texas Attorney General I saw it every day: the struggle for power between the legislative branch and the executive branch.