ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with the famous passage in John Adams’ Defence of the Constitutions which first uses the exact expression “the tyranny of the majority.” Adams’ text expresses a basically traditional point of view when it compares democracy as a simple form of government to the preferable idea of mixed constitutions. Although the Federalist Papers do not use the actual phrase, a series of articles (10, 47–51, 61–62) likewise elaborate on a sophisticated system of political technology to prevent the flaws of simple majoritarianism. The rest of the chapter pays equal attention to the Anti-Federalists’ less-known objections, the debates between moral majorities and minorities in the early 1800s, and the works of James Calhoun, who would later become an inspiration for such authors as John Stuart Mill.
