Bounding the Vote

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

No constitutional democracy has solved the tension between majority rule and minority rights by picking one over the other. Instead, each has built countermajoritarian institutions, mechanisms designed specifically to survive a majority that disagrees with them. An entrenched bill of rights takes certain questions off the ordinary legislative table entirely, so that no simple vote, however lopsided, can strip a right it protects. Judicial review backs that entrenchment with an institution insulated from electoral pressure, a court whose members do not have to win the next election to keep ruling against a popular law. The separation of powers adds a structural obstacle of its own, since a faction that wins one branch of government still has to contend with the other two. And supermajority requirements, entrenched clauses that require a bigger than simple majority vote to change them, deliberately make some decisions harder to reach than ordinary majority rule would allow, trading efficiency for protection. None of these mechanisms eliminates majority rule; each one simply declares certain ground off limits to it, converting Madison and Tocqueville's warning from a hope into an institutional fact.