The U.S. Constitution is famous for its “Madisonian system” of structural constraints on the central government's powers. More than two hundred years of experience with the system gives us a pretty good perspective on both its strengths and its limitations. The major structural constraints are: (1) the doctrine of the general government as a government of delegated and enumerated, and therefore limited, powers; (2) the dual sovereignty of the general government and the states—with the states functioning as governments of general jurisdiction exercising generalized police powers (a kind of plenary authority), limited under the national constitution only by specific prohibitions or by grants of power to the general government; (3) the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers within the national government, creating a system of “checks and balances” that limits the power of any one branch and, it is hoped, improves the quality of government by making the legislative and policy-making processes more challenging, slower, and more deliberative; and (4) the practice (nowhere expressly authorized in the text of the Constitution, but lay that aside for now) of constitutional judicial review by the federal courts.
(Robert P. George, Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, American Ideals and Institutions Series, ed. Robert P. George [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2013], 15)
