The price we pay for minority rule | #198 – May 29, 2022
Remarks on mass shootings, interest groups and the Senate filibuster
When should the people get what they want from their government? Surely a reasonable answer is: Most of the time. That is the position taken by most legal scholars and political theorists, and the one I explore in-depth in Strength in Numbers. Besides, I am sure few would argue the majority should get what it want none of the time, or that people should always get what the want.
The latter would constitute a “tyranny of the majority,” as the popular saying goes. And yet the quote, from Alexis de Tocqueville's 1835 book Democracy in America, has been used to justify a truly heinous analytical jump to the opposition of majority rule altogether. Modern Tocquevillians argue that, if the majority trends always toward the tyrannical, then the minority cannot be — and should therefore have the power vested in itself. In this formulation, the counter-majoritarian institutions of the United States — the Senate, the Electoral College, and arguable the House d…
