The "Separation of Powers" principle was an idea embedded into the plans for American government by our founding fathers, based on their reading of Enlightenment political theory. The terminology "separation of powers" was introduced by Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron of Montesquieu. (Usually he's referred to as just "Montesquieu.") He wrote an important work of political theory called <em>The Spirit of the Laws, </em>published in 1748. Within his treatment of how governments will function best, Montesquieu argued that executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government ought to be divided between parts of the government, so that no one person or division of the government can infringe on the overall rights of others in the government or of the members of the society overall.
Historians such as Dr. Donald Grinde of the University at Buffalo (part of the State University of New York system)(, have noted that founding fathers such as Benjamin Franklin and James Madison also were influenced by the Great Law of Peace, the oral constitution of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora). The living example of the Iroquois Confederacy gave evidence of ideas of individual liberty and the separation of powers that the founders wrote into the US Constitution.
