THE SEPARATION OF POWERS IN MODERN CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE VENEZUELAN CONSTITUTIONAL TRADITION

The principle of separation of powers in modern constitutionalism has its origin in the constitutions of the former colonies of North America. For example, the Constitution of Virginia of June 29, 1776, set forth the following:

This provision and similar ones incorporated after 1776 in other constitutions of the former colonies of North America have their theoretical backgrounds in the writings of Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, which were the most important weapons used during the eighteenth-century American and French revolutions in the battle against the absolute state – in North America to fight against the sovereignty of British Parliament, and in France to fight against the sovereignty of the monarch. The consequence of both revolutions was the replacement of the absolute state by a constitutional state, subject to the rule of law, based precisely on separation of powers as a guarantee of liberty, although with different trends of government: the presidential system of government in the United States resulting from the American Revolution and, decades after the French Revolution, the consolidation of the parliamentary system of government in Europe.

Separation of powers thus became the most important and distinguishing principle of modern constitutionalism.