The President and the Supreme Court

In 1776 the American Declaration of Independence proclaimed that legitimate government rested on "the consent of the governed." Eleven years later, the writers of the U.S. Constitution began their preamble with the words "We the People." The Framers of the Constitution grounded it on popular consent, but they favored a representative, or indirect, rather than a direct, or pure, democracy. ¹ Accordingly, they designed institutional structures and constitutional guarantees that would temper majority rule with protections for minority rights and respect for the rule of law.