Book Review: 'Why Thomas Jefferson’s Advice on the Separation of Powers is Relevant Today'

Fleming, Denis, and Sheryl G. Snyder. Thomas Jefferson and the Kentucky Constitution. 

Charleston: The History Press, 2025.

 By Gene Procknow - Posted at Researching the American Revolution:

Book Review

Based on recent archival research, lawyer and constitutional scholar Denis Fleming asserts that Thomas Jefferson significantly influenced the first Kentucky Constitution. Many historians and observers have overlooked this connection, which Fleming discovered in the correspondence of George Nicholas. A prominent Kentucky politician and former Virginian, Nicholas spearheaded the drafting of Kentucky’s original 1792 constitution. Although the framers of the US Constitution did not incorporate Jefferson’s clear separation of powers clause, the Monticello planter’s impact is evident in the Bluegrass State’s robust separation of powers clause. The first article of the fifteenth state’s constitution delineates three branches of government.

“The powers of government shall be divided into three distinct departments, each of them to be confided to a separate body of magistracy, to wit: those which are legislative to one, those which are executive to another, and those which are judiciary to another.”

The George Nicholas Papers at the University of Chicago include a one-page memo discussing the separation of powers. This document references page 195 of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, which outlines a similar division of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. In addition to the long-standing personal interactions among Jefferson, Nicholas, and other Virginians who relocated to Kentucky, Nicholas’s memo and reference strengthen the link to Jefferson.

Continue here...