Federalist No. 47

Madison wants to examine the particular structure of government and the distribution of power among its constituent parts.

The legislative, executive and judiciary departments ought to be separated and distinct

Montesquieu

The executive magistrate forms an integral part of the legislative authority. He alone has the prerogative of making treaties with foreign sovereigns. All the members of the judiciary department are appointed by him, can be removed by him whole Parliament and form, when he pleases to consult them. The judges are so far connected with the legislative department as often to attend and participate in its deliberations, but they aren’t admitted to a legislative vote.

"There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates" or "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers"

British Constitution

Georgia

South Carolina

Finally Madison says: "I am fully aware that among the many excellent principles which they exemplify, they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger of the inexperience,

under which they were framed. It is but too obvious that in some instances the fundamental principle under consideration has been violated by too great a mixture, and even an actual consolidation, of the different powers"

"What I have wished to evince is, that the charge brought against the proposed Constitution, of violating the sacred maxim of free government, is warranted neither by the real meaning annexed to that maxim by its author, nor by the sense in which it has hitherto been understood in America"

North Carolina

Maryland – has adopted the maxim in the most unqualified terms. They declare that the legislative, executive and judiciary powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other. (219)

Virginia – (219)

North Carolina - declares "that the legislative, executive, and supreme judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other" (220)

South Carolina – (220)

Georgia – declared "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other" (220)

Maryland

Virginia

Federalist No. 47

Delaware

New Jersey

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Madison passes over the constitution of Rhode Island and Connecticut, because they were formed prior to the Revolution and even before the principle under examination had become an object of political attention

Rhode Island and Connecticut

Madison

Connecticut

declares "that 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."

Massachusetts

New York – 218

New Jersey – has blended the different powers of government more than any of preceding. (219)

Pennsylvania – 219

Delaware – 219

New York

New Hampshire

They declared: ‘that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers ought to be kept as separate from, and independent of, each other as the nature of a free government will admit; or as is consistent with that chain of connection that binds the whole fabric of the constitution in one indissoluble bond of unity and amity.’

New Hampshire