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Separation of powers is a political doctrine originating in the writings of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, in which he argued for a constitutional government with three separate branches, each of which would have defined authority to check the powers of the others.
Château de la Brède, Montesquieu's birthplace. Montesquieu was born at the Château de la Brède in southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux. [4] His father, Jacques de Secondat (1654–1713), was a soldier with a long noble ancestry, including descent from Richard de la Pole, Yorkist claimant to the English crown.
Montesquieu's treatise, already widely disseminated, had an enormous influence on the work of many others, most notably: Catherine the Great, who produced Nakaz (Instruction); the Founding Fathers of the United States Constitution; and Alexis de Tocqueville, who applied Montesquieu's methods to a study of American society, in Democracy in America.
Montesquieu's Considerations on the causes of the grandeur and decadence of the Romans; a new translation, together with an introduction, critical and illustrative notes, and an analytical index by Jehu Baker; Being Incidentally a Rational Discussion of the Phenomena and the Tendencies of History in General.
As one historian writes: "The American adoption of a democratic theory that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, as it had been put as early as the Declaration of Independence, was epoch-marking". [35] [37] The American Revolution had its impact on the French Revolution and later movements in Europe. [38]
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. [3] It superseded the Articles of Confederation , the nation's first constitution , on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the frame of the federal government .
Proponents of the doux commerce theory argued that the spread of trade and commerce will decrease violence, including open warfare. [6] [7] Montesquieu wrote, for example, that "wherever the ways of man are gentle, there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, there the ways of men are gentle" [8] and "The natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace". [1]
The British government, for the most part, ignored the Enlightenment's leaders in England and Scotland, although it did give Newton a knighthood and a very lucrative government office. A common theme among most countries which derived Enlightenment ideas from Europe was the intentional non-inclusion of Enlightenment philosophies pertaining to ...