Ideas of separation of powers in the works of John Locke and Charles Louis Montesquieu
This article justifies the role and importance of the separation of powers in modern society and in the state, consisting in the fact that this concept is the instrument of restricting the state power to protect the rights and interests of the person. As a rule, the separation of powers is opposed to the concepts of autocracy, the concentration of power in the hands of one person or one organ. The author recognizes the theory of separation of powers as being ideologically linked to the political legacy of Locke and Montesquieu and notes that the genesis of the theory of separation of powers is associated with the emergence of bourgeois political and legal theories, especially in the 17th century in England, D. Locke being the most authoritative political thinker. However, this theory received a classic formulation in the writings of the remarkable French philosopher, lawyer and illuminator Charles Louis Montesquieu. In this article, the characteristics of the original theories regarding the separation of powers of these prominent thinkers, who completed for the first time the concept of a democratically organized state with the optimal organization of the system of organs of state power, are subject to analysis