http://www.quora.

com/Which-branch-of-the-government-is-the-most-powerful

The Framers of the Constitution saw the Legislature as the most likely threat to the balance of
power among the branches (with James Madison calling it an "impetuous vortex" in
the Federalist Papers), which is partly why they established enumerated powers, divided
Congress into two chambers with different methods of election and terms of service, and gave
the President veto authority to round it out.

The Judiciary's ability to overturn laws found to be unconstitutional is not a

check explicitly defined in the Constitution, but was articulated in Marbury v. Madison as,
basically, the logical conclusion of having a judiciary defined in the Constitution (with
contemporary scholars believing the power of judicial review was so obvious to the Framers that
they hadn't felt the need to spell it out).

For much of the history of the U.S., with exceptions, Congress was the dominating force of
government. Presidents exercised fairly minimal influence outside their specific executive duties
in the absence of an emergency (again, barring notable exceptions) and the Supreme Court held
even less stature after its run of influence in the early 19th Century, during which time it defined
the scope and boundaries of some of the more pressing Constitutional questions.

However, beginning in the 20th Century, the power of the President was enhanced by a great
many factors, all of which take a great deal of time to explain and which had varying degrees of
importance at any given time; but the short of it is that the Executive is now generally seen as

being the mostinfluential of the three branches (depending in large part on the Presidents
standing with the electorate) even if the explicit power and authorities of the Executive havent
fundamentally changed.

In the last couple of decades in particular, part of the rise of the Presidency has been due to the
fact that Congress has, in effect, become so good at being divided and divisive that
its inactivityhas become a more powerful force than anything it actually manages to do (which is
a weird kind of negative power that it wields).