John Engler Quotes

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.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

For more than 500 years -- since the rise of nation-states and parliaments -- a preoccupation of Western political thought has been the problem of defining and confining executive power.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

People assume that the executive branch has more power than it actually has. Only the legislative branch can create the laws; the executive branch cannot create the laws. So, if the executive branch tries to create a branch one side or the other... you go back to the founders of the nation. They set up a system that ensures that it doesn't happen.

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.

The difference between the departments undoubtedly is, that the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

In France, executive power dominates much more than in Anglo-Saxon countries

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

The most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of government

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

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

The authority of the Supreme Court must not ... be permitted to control the Congress, or the Executive, when acting in their legislative capacities.

Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces—the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches. Questions daily occur in the course of practice which prove the obscurity which reigns in these subjects, and which puzzle the greatest adepts in political science.

It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them his assent.

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch

I'm a former governor, and so I was the chief executive, and when the legislature wasn't in session, I was running the state.

I've put forth measures that would actually eliminate some of the executive branch power. You know, philosophically, that's where I am.

Only Congress can amend the law, not President Obama nor the courts.

The separation of powers is about legislative powers. It isn't about discussion or words.

The constitution has divided the powers of government into three branches, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, lodging each with a distinct magistracy. The Legislative it has given completely to the Senate and House of Representatives. It has declared that the Executive powers shall be vested in the President, submitting special articles of it to a negative by the Senate, and it has vested the Judiciary power in the courts of justice, with certain exceptions also in favor of the Senate.

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