ABSTRACT
The relatively modest traditional role of the Presidency in relation to the legislature is symbolized by the history of the veto power. Traditionally the American governmental system has been in fact what it has been customarily said to be: a changing equilibrium of dispersed, balancing and conflicting powers. It is a historical commonplace that in the course of our history the power equilibrium among the different branches of the central government has continually varied. Franklin Roosevelt was the first President to veto what was for so many centuries of Anglo-American political tradition the acknowledged key and peculiar power of the legislative assembly: a revenue bill. The idea, widespread today, that in the American system the Supreme Court is the ultimate and only constitutional arbiter, so that the system is actually one of "judicial supremacy", is no more borne out in American tradition than in the written propositions of the Constitution itself.
