From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

I think that the real thing that we're seeing right now is the dominance of the administrative and the judicial over the others.

And among the three branches, the dominance of the judicial.

And that's something that both sides have accepted.

This is your host, Scott Bertram. And that's Dr. Kevin Porteus, Professor of Politics and Director of

American Studies at Hillsdale College. We talk at length with Dr. Porteus today about the separation

of powers in our federal government. Dr. Porteus, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

This is how our government was set up in the Constitution.

Of course, the country had a document before that,

the Articles of Confederation that failed.

What did our founders learn from the Articles of Confederation

that led them to this idea of the separation of powers?

Well, after independence and the colonists now, the new Americans, were left to write or rewrite

their colonial constitutions as new state constitutions, and then they needed a new government

at the national level,

if we're going to be one people, they put into practice a good deal of what they had learned

in their colonial experience. And the colonial experience was that governors, the executive branch,

they were royally appointed.

They say they're not representative of the people.

And so those are the people, the executive branch, that's the one we need to guard against.

They learn from the British system, monarchy, that can be tyrannical.

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