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6 - Reason, Will, and Popular Sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2022

Kody W. Cooper  and
Justin Buckley Dyer
Kody W. Cooper
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Justin Buckley Dyer
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

Why should the Constitution be considered authoritative and demand our loyalty?The answer to this question is tightly bound up with how we think about popular sovereignty. Crucially, the American colonists reaffirmed the rule of law over the rule of will, whether as it had been theorized both by partisans of absolutist monarchy (e.g., Filmer) or partisans of absolutist democracy (e.g., Rousseau). To understand the Founders’ perspective on popular sovereignty under the rule of law, we contrast it with Rousseau's voluntarist and positivist account and engage with recent scholarship in consitutional theory on popular sovereignty.The chapter then reconstructs the founders' account of sovereignty taking inspiration from Orestes Brownson.

Keywords

popular sovereigntyRousseauFederalistOrestes Brownsonprovidential constitution
Type
Chapter
Information
The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics
Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding
 , pp. 156 - 188
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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