Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Countering The Majoritarian Difficulty, Amy Coney Barrett
Countering The Majoritarian Difficulty, Amy Coney Barrett
Journal Articles
In Our Republican Constitution, Randy Barnett argues that the United States Constitution rests on a foundation of individual rather than collective popular sovereignty. Grounding the legitimacy of the government in the authority given it by each individual rather than by the People as a whole echoes the thesis, advanced in Barnett’s prior work, that the government must justify incursions upon individual liberty. If the People as a body are sovereign and the Constitution is designed to facilitate democratic self-governance, legislation is presumptively legitimate because it represents the sovereign will of the democratic majority. If the individual is sovereign, by contrast, …