Consent of the People the Governed

"Consent of the governed" is a phrase found in the United States Declaration of Independence.

Using thinking similar to that of English philosopher John Locke, the founders of the United
States believed in a state built upon the consent of "free and equal" citizens; a state otherwise
conceived would lack legitimacy and Rational-legal authority. This was expressed, among other
places, in the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (emphasis added):[4]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Tyrant

ty·rant /ˈtīrənt/ noun: tyrant; plural noun: tyrants

1. a cruel and oppressive ruler. "the tyrant was deposed by popular demonstrations"

synonyms: dictator, despot, autocrat, authoritarian, oppressor; More slave driver, martinet, bully,
megalomaniac "dare we envision a world free from tyrants?"

•a person exercising power or control in a cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary way. "her father was a
tyrant and a bully" •(especially in ancient Greece) a ruler who seized power without legal right.

Definition of tyrant. 1 a : an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution. b : a usurper of

sovereignty. 2 a : a ruler who exercises absolute power oppressively or brutally. b : one
resembling an oppressive ruler in the harsh use of authority or power.

Types of consent[edit]

Unanimous consent[edit]

A key question is whether the unanimous consent of the governed is required; if so, this would
imply the right of secession for those who do not want to be governed by a particular collective.
All democratic governments today allow decisions to be made even over the dissent of a
minority of voters, which in some theorists' view, calls into question whether said governments
can rightfully claim, in all circumstances, to act with the consent of the governed.[7]

Hypothetical consent[edit]
The theory of hypothetical consent of the governed holds that one's obligation to obey
government depends on whether the government is such that one ought to consent to it, or
whether the people, if placed in a state of nature without government, would agree to said
government.[8] This theory has been rejected by some scholars[who?], who argue that since
government itself can commit aggression, creating a government to safeguard the people from
aggression would be similar to the people, if given the choice of what animals to be attacked by,
trading "polecats and foxes for a lion", a trade that they would not make.[9]

Overt versus tacit consent[edit]

Another division that is sometimes made is between overt consent and tacit consent. Overt
consent, to be valid, would require voluntariness, a specific act on the part of the consenters, a
particular act consented to, and specific agents who perform this action. Immigrating into a
particular jurisdiction is sometimes regarded as an overt act indicating consent to be ruled by that
jurisdiction's government. Not all who are ruled by a particular government have immigrated to
that jurisdiction, however; some were born there; however others argue that the power to
emigrate from (i.e. leave) a jurisdiction implies such consent omission.

It has been pointed out that in jurisdictions where proportional representation is not used, but
candidates are instead elected by plurality vote, a candidate can be elected despite the overt
dissent of a majority of the people. Not every voter has necessarily had an opportunity to vote on
the constitutional provisions specifying that plurality voting should be used; according to some
theorists, this calls into question whether said voters have consented to be governed by the
candidates who obtain plurality support. A counterargument is that, by failing to act through the
process of constitutional amendment to change such provisions, the people have consented to
them. A rebuttal to this is that in some jurisdictions, the means of amending the constitution are
not completely in the hands of the electorate; the same issues arise, in claiming that the
constitution left in place by the decisions of the people's elected representatives is consented to
by the people, as arise in claiming that any other actions taken by said representatives are
consented to by the people. Some proponents of the "overt consent" theory hold that the act of
voting implies consent, while others question the connection between voting and consenting to a
particular scheme of representative, since some voters may oppose the system as a whole but
desire to influence decisions on particular issues or candidates.[7]

The theory of tacit consent of the governed holds that if the people live in a country that is not
undergoing a rebellion, they have consented to the rule of that country's government.[9] However,
this likewise meets with the criticism that tacit consent is incompatible with express opposition:
i.e. the People cannot consent if they have no right to refuse.

Engineered consent[edit]

In 1988, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky described a propaganda model of news media
in the United States[10] in which coverage of current events was skewed by corporations and the
state in order to manufacture the consent of the governed. According to the propagandist Edward
L. Bernays, the public may be manipulated by its subconscious desires to render votes to a
political candidate. The public relations techniques were described in his essay and book The
Engineering of Consent (1955). Consent thus obtained undermines the legitimacy of
government: "The basic principle involved is simple but important: If the opinions of the public
are to control the government, these opinions must not be controlled by the government."[11]

Literal consent[edit]

The theory of Literal consent holds the logical position that valid consent must denote final
authority belonging to the People, rather than elected officials; this therefore implies that the
People have the absolute sovereign power to overrule their government at any time, via popular
vote (or as stated in the Declaration of Independence, "the right of the People to alter or abolish"
their government). Without this unfettered power, theorists hold that true consent cannot exist;
and that any government is therefore despotism, via governing the People by force without their
actual consent.

Popular sovereignty

Popular sovereignty, or sovereignty of the peoples' rule, is the principle that the authority of a
state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their
elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power. It is
closely associated with social contract philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty expresses a concept and does not necessarily reflect
or describe a political reality.[a] The people have the final say in government decisions. Benjamin
Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments, the rulers are the servants
and the people their superiors and sovereigns".[1]

Americans founded their Revolution and government on popular sovereignty, but the term was
also used in the 1850s to describe a highly controversial approach to slavery in the territories as
propounded by senator Stephen A. Douglas. It meant that local residents of a territory would be
the ones to decide if slavery would be permitted, and it led to bloody warfare in Bleeding Kansas
as violent abolitionists and proponents of slavery flooded Kansas territory in order to decide the
elections. An earlier development of popular sovereignty arose from philosopher Francisco
Suarez and became the basis for Latin American independence. Popular sovereignty also can be
described as the voice of the people.

the social contracts school (mid-17th to mid-18th centuries), represented by Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), author of The
Social Contract, a prominent political work that clearly highlighted the ideals of "general will"
and further matured the idea of popular sovereignty. The central tenet is that legitimacy of rule or
of law is based on the consent of the governed. Popular sovereignty is thus a basic tenet of most
Republics, and in some monarchies. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau were the most influential
thinkers of this school, all postulating that individuals choose to enter into a social contract with
one another, thus voluntarily giving up some of their natural freedom in return for protection
from dangers derived from the freedom of others. Whether men were seen as naturally more
prone to violence and rapine (Hobbes) or cooperation and kindness (Rousseau), the idea that a
legitimate social order emerges only when the liberties and duties are equal among citizens binds
the social contract thinkers to the concept of popular sovereignty.
A parallel development of a theory of popular sovereignty can be found among the School of
Salamanca (see e.g. Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) or Francisco Suarez (1548–1617)), who
(like the theorists of the divine right of kings and Locke) saw sovereignty as emanating
originally from God, but (unlike divine right theorists and in agreement with Locke) passing
from God to all people equally, not only to monarchs.

Republics and popular monarchies is theoretically based on popular sovereignty. However, a

legalistic notion of popular sovereignty does not necessarily imply an effective, functioning
democracy: a party or even an individual dictator may claim to represent the will of the people,
and rule in its name, pretending to detain auctoritas. That would be congruent with Hobbes's
view on the subject, but not with most modern definitions that see democracy as a necessary
condition of popular sovereignty.

Popular sovereignty in the United States of America[edit]

Main article: Popular sovereignty in the United States

The application of the doctrine of popular sovereignty receives particular emphasis in American
history, notes historian Christian G. Fritz's American Sovereigns: The People and America's
Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, a study of the early history of American
constitutionalism.[2] In describing how Americans attempted to apply this doctrine prior to the
territorial struggle over slavery that led to the Civil War, political scientist Donald S. Lutz noted
the variety of American applications:

To speak of popular sovereignty is to place ultimate authority in the people. There are a variety
of ways in which sovereignty may be expressed. It may be immediate in the sense that the people
make the law themselves, or mediated through representatives who are subject to election and
recall; it may be ultimate in the sense that the people have a negative or veto over legislation, or
it may be something much less dramatic. In short, popular sovereignty covers a multitude of
institutional possibilities. In each case, however, popular sovereignty assumes the existence of
some form of popular consent, and it is for this reason that every definition of republican
government implies a theory of consent.

— Donald S. Lutz[3][b]

The American Revolution marked a departure in the concept of popular sovereignty as it had
been discussed and employed in the European historical context. With their Revolution,
Americans substituted the sovereignty in the person of King George III, with a collective
sovereign—composed of the people. Thenceforth, American revolutionaries generally agreed
and were committed to the principle that governments were legitimate only if they rested on
popular sovereignty – that is, the sovereignty of the people.[c] This idea—often linked with the
notion of the consent of the governed—was not invented by the American revolutionaries.
Rather, the consent of the governed and the idea of the people as a sovereign had clear 17th and
18th century intellectual roots in English history.[4]

1850s[edit]
Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War and Kansas–Nebraska Act

In the 1850s, in the run-up to the Civil War, Northern Democrats led by Senator Lewis Cass of
Michigan and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois promoted popular sovereignty as a middle position
on the slavery issue. It said that actual residents of territories should be able to decide by voting
whether or not slavery would be allowed in the territory. The federal government did not have to
make the decision, and by appealing to democracy Cass and Douglas hoped they could finesse
the question of support for or opposition to slavery. Douglas applied popular sovereignty to
Kansas in the Kansas Nebraska Act which passed Congress in 1854. The Act had two
unexpected results. By dropping the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which said slavery would
never be allowed in Kansas), it was a major boost for the expansion of slavery. Overnight
outrage united anti-slavery forces across the North into an "anti-Nebraska" movement that soon
was institutionalized as the Republican Party, with its firm commitment to stop the expansion of
slavery. Second, pro- and anti-slavery elements moved into Kansas with the intention of voting
slavery up or down, leading to a raging civil war, known as "Bleeding Kansas." Abraham
Lincoln targeted popular sovereignty in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, leaving Douglas
in a position that alienated Southern pro-slavery Democrats who thought he was too weak in his
support of slavery. The Southern Democrats broke off and ran their own candidate against
Lincoln and Douglas in 1860.[5]