check and balance

present singular third person checks and balances · participle present checking and balancing · participle past checked and balanced · past checked and balanced

1. idiomaticProvide mutual oversight and limitation by independent organizations in order to prevent abuses of power.

   The Constitution achieves this checking and balancing function in several ways.

   1999, Jethro Koller Lieberman, A Practical Companion to the Constitution, →ISBN, page 3

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   A second distinguishing feature, Shackleton contends, is that the separation of powers also stresses the checking and balancing of one power against another, whereas the mixed state combines all interests solely to prevent or stall the inevitable degeneration of government, not to check power.

   1992, Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, →ISBN, page 145

   Since each branch had exclusive powers, separated powers did not mean an aggressively political process of checking and balancing of executive policy choices by Congress.

   1998, Richard A. Brisbin, Jr., Justice Antonin Scalia and the Conservative Revival, →ISBN, page 46

   Rather, they should find their proper places in a dialectics of mutual checking and balancing toward forming a convergence and universalization of feelings.

   2000, Lewis Edwin Hahn, Perspectives on Habermas, →ISBN, page 217

   As technology takes new forms, it brings new opportunities for corruption and hence demands new checking and balancing.

   2011, Adam Graycar, Russell G. Smith, Handbook of Global Research and Practice in Corruption, →ISBN, page 16

plural checks and balances

1. idiomaticThe mutual oversight provided by a system of independent organizations with control over each other.

   Because of the check and balance function of journalists, they are sometimes called the “watchdog for the people”.

   2013, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Freedom of Expression Toolkit: A Guide for Students, →ISBN, page 36

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   Whoever has taken a critical and serious look at human history will indisputably come to conclusion that man's madness and craziness know no boundary or limit even when check and balance of power are being applied.

   2009, Celly Luyinduladio, Hidden and Inaccessible Knowledge, →ISBN

   In this way, moral check and balance is combined with legal check and balance (i.e., legally based check and balance).

   2014, Yining Li, Beyond Market and Government, →ISBN

   Practices show that check and balance of powers and democratic oversight belong to two different categories, with differences in their subjects, objects, methods and other aspects.

   2015, Ning Fang, China’s Democracy Path, →ISBN, page 158