...great "departments" of government — the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. To Madison, "[T]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny" (Federalist 47, par. 2). Those three...

...Brennan begins with the assertion that basic to the system established by the Framers was the notion that the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of none, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be...

...government, but he was not quite on point as to the meaning of the danger. He said in The Federalist, No. 47: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be...

...freedom. Indeed, Madison called the doctrine "a first principle of free government," and wrote that "[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be...

...associates tyranny with the concentration of all governmental powers into a small group of people: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny" (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay [1789] 1999,...

...and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition. — John Acton, historian The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced...

...central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution. In the words of James Madison, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be...

...with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. L whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced...

...mechanisms) a separation of powers among the three branches of the national government. As Madison put it, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced...

...that those powers should be properly distributed. " 51. Ibid, p-44- Madison's definition of tyranny: "The accumulation of all powers— legislative, executive, and judiciary - in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be...