True or False? Motesquieu's writings gave the idea of separation of powers to England.
1 Answer
False - Montesquieu wrote about the need to have a separation of powers within government, but England had already formed a version of this system by the time Montesquieu wrote his treatise.
Explanation:
Montesquieu, whose full name was Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, was a man of letters, a lawyer, and political philosopher who lived in the Age of Enlightenment (b. 1689 - d. 1755) in France.
Montesquieu wrote largely about society, the values inherent within man, and the institutions that helped balance those values with the needs of a well functioning society.
In his work, The Spirit of the Laws, he observed, in part, that governments derive their power from either a sovereign point of view (in that there is a head of government who is supposed to be there - whether through birth, nobility, or what have you), or from an administrative point of view (in that government is chosen by the people).
Within the administrative forms of governments, he saw that there were three powers exercised: the legislative (or the creation of rules), the executive (the enforcing of rules), and the judicial (the interpreting of rules). Montesquieu argued that each "branch" of this kind of government should be able to stand alone and be of equal power - and not be overwhelmed by another branch or even the other two branches working together.
In the same work, he spends four chapters discussing English government which already had the separation of powers in the forms he described (the Monarch, the Parliament, and the Judiciary).
So while Montesquieu wrote extensively on the philosophy of government and within that the need to have a separation of powers within government, England had already formed a version of this system by the time Montesquieu wrote his treatise. And so it is False that he "gave" or otherwise invented the separation of powers within government.
