Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 495.0

524US2

Unit: $U93

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CLINTON v. CITY OF NEW YORK

Kennedy, J., concurring

478 U. S. 714, 736 (1986); INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 944–
945, 958–959 (1983); Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Mara-
thon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50, 73–74 (1982). The latter
premise, too, is ﬂawed. Liberty is always at stake when one
or more of the branches seek to transgress the separation
of powers.

Separation of powers was designed to implement a funda-
mental insight: Concentration of power in the hands of a sin-
gle branch is a threat to liberty. The Federalist states the
axiom in these explicit terms: “The accumulation of all pow-
ers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands
. . . may justly be pronounced the very deﬁnition of tyranny.”
The Federalist No. 47, p. 301 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). So con-
vinced were the Framers that liberty of the person inheres
in structure that at ﬁrst they did not consider a Bill of Rights
necessary. The Federalist No. 84, pp. 513, 515; G. Wood, The
Creation of the American Republic 1776–1787, pp. 536–543
(1969).
It was at Madison’s insistence that the First Con-
gress enacted the Bill of Rights. R. Goldwin, From Parch-
ment to Power 75–153 (1997).
It would be a grave mistake,
however, to think a Bill of Rights in Madison’s scheme then
or in sound constitutional theory now renders separation of
powers of lesser importance. See Amar, The Bill of Rights
as a Constitution, 100 Yale L. J. 1131, 1132 (1991).

In recent years, perhaps, we have come to think of liberty
as deﬁned by that word in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amend-
ments and as illuminated by the other provisions of the Bill
of Rights. The conception of liberty embraced by the Fram-
ers was not so conﬁned. They used the principles of separa-
tion of powers and federalism to secure liberty in the funda-
mental political sense of the term, quite in addition to the
idea of freedom from intrusive governmental acts. The idea
and the promise were that when the people delegate some
degree of control to a remote central authority, one branch
of government ought not possess the power to shape their
In
destiny without a sufﬁcient check from the other two.
this vision, liberty demands limits on the ability of any one