What is popular sovereignty?

Popular sovereignty is the principle that ultimate political authority resides in the people, who delegate limited powers to government through a written constitution and through periodic elections. The Preamble of the Constitution captures the idea in its opening words, We the People of the United States, do ordain and establish this Constitution. Authority comes from the people first; government is a creation built on top of that authority and remains accountable to it.

The principle has deep roots. John Locke argued in his Second Treatise of Government in 1689 that legitimate political power exists only by consent of those governed. Jean-Jacques Rousseau extended the idea in The Social Contract in 1762. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 made it the philosophical heart of American government when it asserted that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Popular sovereignty is implemented in concrete ways in American constitutional design. Congress is elected directly by voters in the House and, since the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, in the Senate as well. The president is chosen through the Electoral College, whose electors are themselves chosen by voters in each state. State governors and most state legislators are popularly elected. Constitutional amendments require ratification by elected state legislatures or by state conventions. U.S. officials take their oath to the Constitution rather than to any king, party, or individual. The Tenth Amendment underlines popular sovereignty by reserving to the states or the people any powers not delegated to the federal government.

Popular sovereignty does not mean unlimited majority rule. The Constitution and Bill of Rights protect minorities and individuals against majorities through the courts, through structural features like the Senate and the Bill of Rights, and through supermajority requirements for amendments and treaties. The principle also shapes interpretation of the Constitution: judges and elected officials look to the founding generation, but more importantly to the deliberate process by which We the People chose the words of the Constitution, when deciding what those words mean.

Throughout American history popular sovereignty has been used both to defend self-government and, controversially, to defend the right of new territories to choose their own laws on slavery before the Civil War.