Opinion ID: 1424945
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Separation of Powers Delaware Constitutional History

Text: In answering your question, the Justices concluded that a review of the case law from Delaware and other jurisdictions was not sufficient, standing alone. It is essential to analyze the history of the Constitutions of the State of Delaware through the prism of fundamental principles of separation of powers. [33] As the collective estrangement between the American colonies and the British monarch mounted, the need for stabilizing each colony's internal affairs intensified. In May of 1776, all hope of reconciliation was abandoned. The colonies were advised to form new governments by the Second Continental Congress. [34] The Continental Congress considered, but eventually declined to recommend, any model format of governance for the states to adopt. [35] With the drafting and adoption of state constitutions in America, came a paradigm shift in the character of written frameworks for government. [36] Although the specific provisions varied, the legal result reflected in each state constitution was the same: to define sovereignty with precision and to restrain its exercise within marked boundaries, [37] according to rules of law. [38] No principle of American constitutionalism has attracted more attention than separation of powers. It has come to define the essential character of the American political system. The notion of distinct powers of government can be traced to antiquity, but its more immediate sources for American colonists in 1776 were philosophers such as Charles Montesquieu, [39] Jean Jacques Rousseau, [40] and John Locke; [41] and by English common law scholars like Edward Coke, Henry deBracton, and William Blackstone. [42] Montesquieu had advised against the concentration of governmental power. [43] When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.... Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would then be the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression. There would be an end to everything, were the same man, or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executive the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals. Blackstone had also described the division of authority as the strength of the English Constitution: [44] whenever the [legislative and executive] powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. The magistrate may enact tyrannical laws, and execute them in a tyrannical manner, since he is possessed in quality of dispenser of justice, with all the power, which he, as legislator, things proper to give himself. But where the legislative and executive authority are in distinct hands, the former will take care not to entrust the latter with so large a power, as may tend to the subversion of its own independence, and therewith of the liberty of the subject. Advocates of a state constitutional separation of powers carefully addressed the problems of plural office holding. [45] They feared, in particular, the dangerous accumulation of both executive and legislative powers in the same hands. [46] The authors of the first state constitutions, including the Delaware Constitution of 1776, did not seek merely to prohibit a man from holding more than one office; they prevented officials in one branch from also becoming officials in another. [47] They hoped thereby to avoid concentrations of power in any one branch of government or any group of men. [48]