Everyone Quotes Montesquieu Almost Nobody Reads Past the First Page

Podcast: Consequential Actions Podcast · Jeff Kellick

Opublikowano: 2026-09-19

Montesquieu and the Separation of Powers: The Spirit of the Laws Explained In 1748, a retired French magistrate published The Spirit of the Laws anonymously. Within three years, the Church banned it; within forty, Americans on both sides of the constitutional ratification fight relied on it to make their case. This episode explores Book 11, Chapter 6—the most quoted yet misunderstood passage of 18th-century political writing. Most assume it mandates three permanently separate powers. However, Montesquieu actually envisioned an occasional, temporary judiciary of ordinary men, calling the power of judging "next to nothing." This was entirely unlike th...