Definition of Executive

  LUNARIAN:  Then when your Congress has passed a law it goes       directly to the Supreme Court in order that it may at once be       known whether it is constitutional?
 
  TERRESTRIAN:  O no; it does not require the approval of the       Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced for many       years somebody objects to its operation against himself -- I       mean his client.  The President, if he approves it, begins to       execute it at once.
 
  LUNARIAN:  Ah, the executive power is a part of the legislative.       Do your policemen also have to approve the local ordinances       that they enforce?
 
  TERRESTRIAN:  Not yet -- at least not in their character of       constables.  Generally speaking, though, all laws require the       approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.
 
  LUNARIAN:  I see.  The death warrant is not valid until signed by       the murderer.
 
  TERRESTRIAN:  My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so       consistent.
 
  LUNARIAN:  But this system of maintaining an expensive judicial       machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only after they       have long been executed, and then only when brought before the       court by some private person -- does it not cause great       confusion?
 
  TERRESTRIAN:  It does.
 
  LUNARIAN:  Why then should not your laws, previously to being       executed, be validated, not by the signature of your       President, but by that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme       Court?
 
  TERRESTRIAN:  There is no precedent for any such course.
 
  LUNARIAN:  Precedent.  What is that?
 
  TERRESTRIAN:  It has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three       volumes each.  So how can any one know?