ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the second meaning that for many persons today is also somehow attached to the word "democracy": constitutional government, the rule of law, the preservation of certain rights, among them the right of legitimate minorities not to be crushed by or dissolved into the plebiscitary majority-in short, political liberty. The essence of the constitutional principle is the idea that the law is not, necessarily and ipso facto, what the sovereign does or proclaims, not necessarily identical with the sovereign's will. From a doctrinal standpoint the constitutional principle thus entails the belief that there is some standard for the law, other than or in addition to the will and conduct of the sovereign. The Founding Fathers and the political genius of the American nation were unclear about the doctrine but very clear about the operation. At Philadelphia the Fathers repudiated-though not without regrets on the part of some of them-both the monarchic and the aristocratic principles of legitimacy.
