The system of checks and balances may be the most important institutional feature of the US Constitution. Its presence is a result of the Founders' careful efforts to design a government that would be responsive to persistent changes in the needs of the country and public sentiment while limiting the ability of capricious, transient, or tyrannical majorities to use government power to promote private interests of the general welfare or violate the people's rights. James Madison--the primary architect of the Constitution--explains the logic behind the system of checks and balances more fully in Federalist 51.
This essay is one of the most important among The Federalist Papers, a set of extended newspaper editorials written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, under the pen name Publius, to encourage the state of New York to ratify the Constitution.
