Constitutional Republic
A constitutional republic is a form of government in which the head of state and important officials are elected representatives of the people and act in accordance with existing constitutional law, which guarantees the limitation of the government's power over the citizens. In a constitutional republic, the executive, legislative and judicial organs are strictly separated from one another, so that no individual or group can acquire absolute power.
The fact that a power-restricting constitution exists makes a state constitutional . That the heads of state and other officials determined by elections, and their positions z. B. not transferred by succession or succession, and that their decisions are subject to judicial review, makes a state republican . In contrast to a direct democracy , in a constitutional republic the citizens are not governed by the majority will of the people, but by the constitutional principle of law; the right to vote is limited insofar as the elected representatives have to act within the limits of the overarching constitutional law. The people themselves cannot exercise legislative power through their election. John Adams defined a constitutional republic as "a government of law, not of people."
Constitutional republics are a deliberate attempt to reduce the dangers of pure majority rule, while protecting minority rights from “majority tyranny” through restrictive measures for government officials. A constitutional republic is designed in such a way that “no person or group can attain absolute power.” No individual is entitled to exercise executive, legislative and judicial power; instead it is divided into three distinct, mutually checking areas.
The idea of a constitutional republic is based on the work "Politics" by Aristotle and his conception of polity . In it he contrasts the polity or republican form of government with democracy and oligarchy in the sixth chapter of the third book.
Constitutional republics are advocated by classical liberals . The United States of America is the oldest constitutional republic in the world, and it represents the first comprehensive experiment in this devised form of government. According to James Woodburn in The American Republic and Its Government , “The constitutional republic, with its limits on governance, is clearly in the Constitution enshrines, as you can see in the election of the President, the Senate and the appointment of the members of the Supreme Court. ”He says that in a republic, unlike a democracy, the people not only in the election of officials, but also is reviewed when new legislation is introduced. There is a so-called Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, which guarantees certain personal basic and civil rights. These cannot be overturned by the majority of citizens through appropriate elections, for example to suppress a minority. To eliminate these rights, government officials would have to overcome constitutional controls and get a two-thirds majority in a congressional vote to modify the constitution.
A constitutional republic is a form of liberal democracy , but not all liberal democracies are constitutional republics. Although z. For example , if the head of state is not elected in a monarchy , it can still be a liberal democracy if it has a parliament with elected representatives who govern according to a constitution that protects basic and civil rights (see constitutional monarchy ).
support
Alexander Tsesis, in The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History , states that for him a constitutional republic is “representative politics based on fundamental law, in which every person has the right to follow their own unobtrusive vision of a good life and they to implement. In such a society, the common good is the cumulative product of free and equal individuals who pursue meaningful goals. "
criticism
Karl Marx claimed that a constitutional republic provides a protective political framework for capitalist exploitation. He said: “All the bourgeois economists are aware that production is better under the supervision of a modern police force than under the 'power gives right' principle. They only forget that this principle also contains a legal dimension and that the law of the strongest also applies in their 'constitutional republics', only in a different form. "
swell
- ↑ Levinson, Sanford. Constitutional Faith . Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 60
- ↑ s. Proverb: "Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep decide what to have for dinner ..."
- ↑ Delattre, Edwin. Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing , American Enterprise Institute, 2002, p. 16.
- ↑ Woodburn, James Albert. The American Republic and Its Government : An Analysis of the Government of the United States, GP Putnam, 1903, pp. 58-59
- ↑ Tsesis, Alexander. The The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History , NYU Press, 2004, p. 5
- ↑ Marx, Karl Marx's Outline of the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse)