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Of the Influence of Laws on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in the United States - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2 [1835]

Edition used:

Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, ed. Eduardo Nolla, translated from the French by James T. Schleifer. A Bilingual French-English editions, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). Vol. 2.

Part of: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, 4 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Of the Influence of Laws on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in the United States

Three principal causes for maintaining the democratic republic.—Federal form.—Town institutions.—Judicial power.

[≠The second general cause that I pointed out as serving to maintain the political institutions of the Americans is found in the very goodness of these institutions, that is to say in their conformity to the social state and physical position.≠]

The principal goal of this book was to make the laws of the United States known; if this goal has been reached, the reader has already been able to judge for himself which ones, among these laws, tend really to maintain the democratic republic and which ones put it in danger. If I have not succeeded in the whole course of this book, I will succeed even less in this chapter.

So I do not want to pursue the course that I have already covered, and a few lines must suffice for me to summarize.

Three causes seem to contribute more than all the others to maintaining the democratic republic in the New World:

The first is the federal form that the Americans adopted, and that allows the Union to enjoy the power of a large republic and the security of a small one.

I find the second in the town institutions that, by moderatingu the despotism of the majority, give the people at the same time the taste for liberty and the art of being free.

The third is found in the constitution of the judicial power. I have shown how much the courts serve to correct the errors of democracy and how, without ever being able to stop the movements of the majority, they succeed in slowing and directing them.

[u. ] The manuscript says “by preventing.”