Jon,
Any government branch could in principle abuse its powers in our current system. In my opinion, the last RA did exactly that when it met twice during the last two weeks before elections, including once minutes before the polls opened, in violation of its own, longstading and unbroken traditions, and passed major bills that (in one case) dramatically affected our constitutional order, with no meaningful previous public consultation or debate on the text of that Bill. When the SC was asked to check this abuse of power, it decided in its wisdom that it had no powers to do so -and since the first bill so introduced destroyed the judiciary, there was no other functioning branch capable of checking such legislative violations of principles of democracy, fairness, accountability, openness and the rule of law.
All this is not because I wish to reopen this debate, but rather to show that if any branch has the institutional abilities to abuse its powers, it is the legislature - because it is the only democratically elected one, yet under the current system, it can choose to act as an olygarchy of 5 between elections, and by passing bills, it can effectively both destroy the judiciary and muzzle the SC- and has indeed done so.
The checks and balances proosed by CARE have been clearly spelled out both theoretically (in directly-deliberative approach to policy formation based on significant and continuous public involvement in the policy-fromation process) as well asa in the creation of an Advisory Legislative Body, including the heads of all 4 branches of goverment (RA Leader, SC Dean, Chancellor, Guildmaster) would examine all bills intrduced in the legislature, would discuss any modifications they might deem necessary, would have the opportunity to question each other, and then suggest a (possibly) revised bill text to the legislature. The legislature, of course, would continue to have the right to accept or reject or modify such changes and adopt a bill of its chosing. Taken as a whole, this constitutes a much more open, participative, cooperative legislative process than what we had until now, where abuses of power by any branch of government would be highly unlikely - even assuming, as CARE does not, than the members of any such branch would so uttely lack the professionalism, competence and respect for our democratic system of government as to be inclined to do so.
Regarding the alleged abuses of power by our (former) Chief Justice in drafting the Judiciary Act and hiding "easter eggs" in it (claims in no way born out by factual evidence), one must remember that the Judiciary ACt itself was a unique piece of legislation, in that it was, by definition, jurisgenerative: there was no functioning judiciary branch worth of its name before the act; the legislature authorised a qualified individual to draft such an act; approved it 3 times; and the creator of the Act became Chief Justice. Because of this unique set of circumstances, the appearance took hold (unjustifiably so, in my opinion) that the Chief Justice intended, through the Judiciary Act, to weaken all other branches of government and instaurate a judge-led system of government. Setting aside this unique situation, which because of the directly-delibarative system of polyarchic government proposed by CARE would not be able to occur again should CARE have the necessary votes in the RA to implement ints proposals, I do not forsee any other situation in which the input ofour judicial branch in the drafting of our bills would be so predominant as was the case with hte Judiciary ACt and the Code of Civil Procedure.
In the final instance, the democratically-elected legislative remains the untimate check on the other branches of goverment by its ability to pass laws changing the very nature of other branches o effectively neutralising others (both of which the last legislature did, rather irresponsibly, with respect to the judiciary and scientific branches) -and the ultimate balance against the legislative is the expression of popular will at the ballot box - the results of which, in our case, we shall soon know.
I, for one, and CARE as a whole, are much more optimistic about the professionalism and integrity of all members of our various branches of govenment, and of their genuine desire to act in the public interest as opposed to their own or their immediate groups, to assume that any of them will engage in such blatant, reckless, and desloyal abuse of power as you describe, in violation of all ethical, legal and democratic principles they are sworn to uphold. In any case, under the system proposed by CARE, such abuses of power, were they to be attempted, would be detected and neutralised at an early stage of the legislative process, in a cooperative manner, by all branches of government working together, rather than allowing such issues to fester and explode in an adversarial and recriminatory manner in our public sphere, as hasa hapened recently with the Judiciary Act.