When Montesquieu and the framers of the American Constitution articulated
the conception of a limiting constitution 1 that had grown up in
England, they set a pattern which liberal constitutionalism has followed
ever since. Their chief aim was to provide institutional safeguards of
individual freedom; and the device in which they placed their faith was the
separation of powers. In the form in which we know this division of power
between the legislature, the judiciary, and the administration, it has not
achieved what it was meant to achieve. Governments everywhere have
obtained by constitutional means powers which those men had meant to
deny them. The fi rst attempt to secure individual liberty by constitutions has
evidently failed.
Constitutionalism means limited government. 2 But the interpretation
given to the traditional formulae of constitutionalism has made it possible
to reconcile these with a conception of democracy according to which this
is a form of government where the will of the majority on any particular
matter is unlimited.