Principles
Underlying the legislature's ability to oversee the executive are democratic principles as well as practical purposes. John Stuart Mill, the British Utilitarian philosopher, insisted that oversight was the key feature of a meaningful representative body: “The proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.” As a young scholar and future President, Woodrow Wilson equated oversight with lawmaking, which was usually seen as the supreme function of a legislature. He wrote, “Quite as important as legislation is vigilant oversight of administration.”
The philosophical underpinning for oversight is the Constitution’s system of checks and balances among the legislature, executive, and judiciary. James Madison, known as the “Father of the Constitution,” described the system in Federalist No. 51 as establishing “subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner that each may be a check on the other.”
Read more about this topic: Congressional Oversight
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society.”
—Roy Hattersley (b. 1932)
“The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)