Montesquieu was a famous philosopher and author of the Enlightenment. His main work, The Spirit of the Law, is an extensive work that deals with many areas of law and compares the provisions of law in force in different countries in different eras. However, the work is best known for the fact that in it Montesquieu presents his doctrine of the three divisions of power, which has played a very important role in the development of the forms of government of Western democracies. Montesquieu considered the concentration of power to be the worst threat to civil liberties. His solution to this threat is the doctrine of the threefold division of power, according to which the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary had to be in the hands of different people.
