The Founders' Design · Lesson 1 of 7
We the People
Three words open the Constitution, and they were chosen on purpose. Before the founders built a single branch of government, they settled who owns it.
Most governments in history began with a ruler and worked downward. A king held power, and the people received whatever he chose to allow. The American founders turned that picture upside down.
They began with the people and worked upward. Power, in their design, belongs to the governed first. A government holds only what the people lend it, for purposes they name, under rules they can change.
That idea is the foundation stone. Every other part of the founders’ plan, the three branches, the checks and balances, the Bill of Rights, is built on top of it.
Consent of the Governed
In July 1776, the Declaration of Independence stated the principle in a single sentence that the founders would spend the next fifteen years turning into law.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Read that carefully. Governments do not create rights; they are set up to secure rights people already have. And a government’s powers are only just when they come from consent. A power taken without consent is not authority. It is force.
This was not a new idea in 1776. English thinkers, colonial charters and town meetings had been circling it for more than a century. What was new was a country willing to build its entire legal system on it.
Three Words, on Purpose
When the Constitution was written in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, its opening line could have named the states. An early draft did, listing them one by one. The final version says something different.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The people are the subject of the sentence. They are the ones doing the ordaining and establishing. The government that follows is the object, something the people create for six stated purposes: union, justice, peace at home, defense, the general welfare and liberty.
That list matters. A government built for named purposes can be measured against them. When it stops serving those purposes, it has stopped doing the job it was hired for.
Ratified by the People
The founders did not ask the existing state legislatures to approve the Constitution. Article VII sent it instead to special conventions, chosen by the voters for that one purpose. Nine of thirteen were needed.
This was a deliberate choice, and James Madison pressed for it. A government created by legislatures could be undone by legislatures. A government created by the people themselves rests on the highest authority the founders recognized.
The debate that followed was fierce and public. Newspapers ran essays for and against. The Federalist Papers, eighty-five essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, were written to persuade New York voters. New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify on June 21, 1788, and the new government began on March 4, 1789.
Power on Loan
If the people are the source, then every official is a borrower. A president, a senator, a judge or a police officer holds power that belongs to someone else, for a limited time, for limited purposes.
That is why the Constitution is full of limits. It lists what Congress may do. It sets terms of office. It requires an oath to support the Constitution itself, not a person. The design assumes that power will try to grow, and it treats every grant of power as something that can be measured, checked and taken back.
For the people who live under it, this first principle has a practical meaning. The law is not something done to you from above. It is something you own a share of, and the rights it protects are yours before any government arrives.
Sources
Every quotation in this lesson is from a primary source. The founding documents are published by the National Archives; the Federalist Papers and the founders' letters are in the public record.
- The Declaration of Independence (1776), National Archives transcript
- The Constitution of the United States (1787): Preamble, Article VI, Article VII
- The Federalist Papers (1787 to 1788), Hamilton, Madison and Jay
- James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787
History and civics, not legal advice. For how the law applies to your situation, talk to a licensed lawyer. See our Legal Notice.