When you’re the emperor Augustus, they let you do it.

Reinforced by checks and balances, then a novelty in the evolution of constitutionalism, and the founding generation’s repudiation of usurpation of power, born of its own dreadful experience ...

Escalating lawfare sealed the collapse of the Roman Republic after 500 years of ... The branches of government were refined and the checks and balances between them analyzed and improved.