Democracy in America

About the Author

Alexis de Tocqueville was born on July 29, 1805, and died in his fifty-fourth year on April 16, 1859. He was born a French Aristocrat and lived as one, and he was also a liberal who rejected the old regime of aristocracy and doubted the revolution that overturned it. de Tocqueville's ancestors had fought in the company of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. His ancestors, originally known as the Clérels, acquired the fief of Tocqueville and took the name in 1661. Alexis's father, Hervé, became a count in 1820, and he married the granddaughter of Malesherbes in 1820. Malesherbes and Hervé were imprisoned during the terror, but the later was spared and released.

Unlike other aristocrats of his time, de Tocqueville did not despair of democracy. He neither scorned it nor opposed it. On the whole, he approved of it - or at least accepted it with every appearance of willingness.

de Tocqueville and his friend Gustave de Beaumont traveled to America in 1831 as collaborators in a project to see what a great republic is. de Tocqueville went to America not planning on writing a book and also with a smaller project in mind (to study penal reform in America). During their 9 month trip in America, de Tocqueville and Beaumont traveled from New York to Buffalo, proceeding through the Great Lakes to the frontier (as it was then) in Michigan and Wisconsin. They then spent two weeks in Canada, and then descended to Boston and Philadelphia and Baltimore. Next they went to Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, then south to Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans, and then north through the southeastern states to Washington and back to New York. They traveled on steamboats and stayed in log cabins during their trip. During their trip, they met John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Albert Gallatin, James Kent, Francis Lieber, Daniel Webster, Sam Houston, Roger Taney, Charles Carroll, and many others less well known. Containing different themes and being welcomed by different receptions, the two volumes of Democracy in America were published in 1835 and 1840.

• The first volume, with its lively picture of America, was a sensation and made de Tocqueville famous.
• The second volume, with its somber analysis of democracy, was received without enthusiasm.

Besides the many Americans who he met on his trip, de Tocqueville acknowledged relying on three most respected commentaries on American democracy:

• The Federalist
• James Kent's Commentaries on American Law
• Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Tocqueville sough out opportunities in politics.

• In 1837, he ran for the Chamber of Deputies in the regime of Louis-Philippe and was defeated.
• In 1839, he ran again and was reelected in 1842 and 1846.
• He became a leading figure of the liberal newspaper Le commerce in 1844.
• He was elected to the constituent assembly and served on the committee that prepared its constitution.
• In 1848, he was elected to the new Assembly and served as Minister of Foreign affairs.

In 1849, de Tocqueville was stricken with an illness (probably Tuberculosis) and eventually lost his life.

Notes on the Editor's Introduction

These are notes on the Editors' Introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, all quotes in this section can be attributes to them.

Democracy in America is at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.

• Tocqueville went to America to see what a great republic was like and what struck him most was the equality of conditions, or the democracy
• Americans follow the philosopher Descartes ideas without ever reading him. Descartes endorses their reliance on their own judgement which tells them they can do without his help.
• • Tocqueville says that America is the one country in the world where the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed

Americans suffer, consequently, from individualism, a lamentable condition - which Tocqueville was the first to depict - in which democratic men and women are thrown on their own resources and consequently come to feel themselves overpowered by impersonal, external forces.

• Tocqueville was a prideful man who has a love of greatness, which attracted him to politics, but he lacked the common touch.
• Restiveness is for him the normal, and perhaps the highest, condition of the human soul.
• Tocqueville fears majority tyranny in America and actually sees it at work there in public opinion
• Americans live in a contradiction: they are attracted to material goods as if they will never die, yet they are never satisfied with them because they do know they will die
• Tocqueville believes that the general outlook for aristocracy is dead, democracy is inevitable, and the question of modern politics is between egalitarian democracy and egalitarian tyranny
• Tocqueville fears that democratic peoples will regard their government as less legitimate than peoples under aristocracies since legitimacy has been transferred from custom to principles
• The editors on man's impotence in democracy:
• • The suffering of others. in fact, can add to one's own sense of impotence, thus to the deepest ill of democratic equality, which Tocqueville calls 'individualism' the self-isolation induced by the belief that an individual by himself can do nothing within a mass of people ruled by vast social forces
• Tocqueville praises religion as much as producing healthy, capable individuals as for strengthening community
• Tocqueville gives political science three features not seen before:
• • the concept of the social state
  • • The social state is the product of a fact or of laws or both together which then become the first cause of most of the laws, customs, and ideas that regulate nations, modifying those it does not produce.
    • If one puts together the democratic social state with the sovereignty of the people, the result is the power of public opinion in democracies, of which Tocqueville makes so much.
    • • democracy is government by public opinion
      • Private opinion - in the sense of what might be reserved to oneself against what most people think - tends to disappear; it proves to have required an aristocratic social state in which independent nobles had the standing to say what they pleased
      • Precisely by not wanting to lord it over your fellows you justify the rule of public opinion, the nonrule that rules modern democracy
  • the notion of those like oneself
  • the practice of making predictions

It is not that democratic patriotism cannot exist; on the contrary it can be more fervent than any previous patriotism. But it has to come to terms with humanity by claiming superior progress instead of insisting on excluding others by virtue of some permanent inequality such as race or nation.

• Two particular threats that democracy poses to independence and dignity:
• • tyranny of the majority
  • mild despotism (or democratic/administrative despotism)
• Tocqueville: I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.
• • If democracy's problem at first seems to be merely that too much is said and not enough is listened to, in the end result is that unpopular truths will no longer be spoken at all, and popular untruths, especially those that flatter the majority, will be reiterated incessantly. Men of independent mind will become utterly dispirited. The theory of equality applied to intellects, Tocqueville says, attacks the pride of man in its last asylum.
• Mores, habits of the heart consist of certain distinct forms peculiar to a people of which they are proud: they are forms of pride
• The second volume of Democracy in America is the study of the likely practical consequences of modern political theory, its effects on the human soul, on reason and sentiment, and consequently on habits or mores, and thereby on politics.
• Modern man probably has more choices than anyone in history has ever had, yet he has fewer guidelines for making choices. With no help - but with full responsibility - judgement becomes a burden too heavy to bear.

Effective relief can be found by seeking refuge in public opinion. An individual looks around and sees many other people holding more or less similar opinions, and their similarity makes them more credible. What everyone thinks must be so! At the same time, no particular person claims responsibility for these common opinions; so no one's pride is at risk in adopting them. Modern democracy, Tocqueville predicts, will be characterized by an unprecedented respect for public opinion. Already in the first volume, Tocqueville claimed to find less real freedom of thought in America than in any other time and place.

• An honest materialism becomes the content of equality and the end of the democratic life.
• Tocqueville foresees the possibility of an industrial aristocracy based almost exclusively on intellectual ability, the new sort of aristocracy we now call meritocracy.
• Democracies will have to swallow a new kind of equality of the sake of maximizing material prosperity, or accept diminished economic productivity for the sake of equality.
• Majority tyranny is tempered by federalism, local self-government, judges, and juries.
• Voluntary associations are an indispensable supplement to government in a democracy.
• Tocqueville is celebrates as the great advocate of civil associations and political participation, especially at the local level.
• Hard-working, determined businessmen are essential to America's national greatness.

Book Overview

Volume 1

Introduction

Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck my eye more vividly than the quality of conditions. I discovered without difficulty the enormous influence that this primary fact exerts on the course of society; it gives a certain direction to public spirt, a certain turn to the laws, new maxims to those who govern, and particular habits to the governed.

In the introduction, Tocqueville recognizes that his home country, France, and all of Europe is approaching the equality of conditions that he saw in his trip to America. Tocqueville mentions this democratic revolution and how it has slowly come about in France for the last 700 years:

• The land of France was initially divided among a few families who possessed the land and governed the inhabitants.
• When the clergy gained political power, equality began to penetrate through the church to the heart of government, as the clergy opened their ranks to all: the rich and the poor.
• As societies became more civilized and the relations among men became more complicated, civil laws were needed and jurists were born
• As kings and nobles exhausted themselves in wars, trade became a new source opening the way to power, and financiers [became] a political power that is scorned and flattered
• As the enlightenment spread, the mind becomes an element in success; science is a means of government, intelligence a social force; the lettered take a place in affairs

Tocqueville notes that when men could own land by means other than feudal tenure and that when industry and art needed men to come together for success, at that moment, all desires that demanded satisfaction [brought] progress toward universal leveling. Looking back over those 700 years, Tocqueville notes no great events ... that have not turned to the profit of equality. In summary, Tocqueville declares:

from the eleventh century on, at the end of each of these periods you cannot fail to perceive that a double revolution has operated on the state of society. The noble has fallen on the social ladder, and the commoner has risen; the one descends, the other climbs.

Tocqueville notes that to instruct democracy ... is the first duty on those direct society in our day and that a new political science is needed for a world altogether new.

Tocqueville reviews aristocracy and the aristocratic social state of the old world:

As the noble had no thought that anyone wanted to wrest from him privileges that he believed legitimate, and the serf regarded his inferiority as an effect of the immutable order of nature, one conceives a sort of reciprocal benevolence that could have been established between two classes sharing such different fates. One would see inequality and misery in society at that time, but souls were not degraded.

It is not the use of power or the habit of obedience that depraves men, but the use of power that they consider illegitimate, and obedience to a power they regard as usurped and oppressive.

Tocqueville then makes some observations on the democratic social state, how the movements of the social body can be regular and progressive, how the attributes of men in society will tend to be closer to the mean (e.g., sciences less great and ignorance rarer), and how each man will feel equal need of those like him. In concluding his thoughts on the difference between the social state of the aristocratic world and the democratic world, Tocqueville writes: the force of a small number of citizens [in an aristocracy], sometimes oppressive, but often protective, has therefore been succeeded by the weakness of all.

Tocqueville on the effect of democracy on religion:

religion finds itself enlisted for the moment among the powers democracy is overturning, and it is often brought to reject the equality it loves and to curse freedom as an adversary, whereas by taking it by the hand, it could sanctify its efforts.

Tocqueville, on democratic man, asks:

Have all centuries, then, resembled ours? Has man, as in our day, always had before his eyes a world where nothing is linked, where virtue is without genius and genius without honor; where love of order is confused with a taste for tyrants and the holy cult of freedom with contempt for laws; where conscience casts only a dubious light on human actions; where nothing seems any longer to be forbidden or permitted, or honest or shameful, or true or false?

Tocqueville on his trip to America:

I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there an image of democracy itself, of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions; I wanted to become acquainted with it if only to know at least what we ought to hope or fear from it.

1. In this first volume, Tocqueville tried to show the direction that democracy, left in America to its penchants and abandoned almost without restraint to its instincts, has naturally given to the laws, the course it has imposed on the government, and in general, the power it has obtained over affairs.
2. In the second volume, it was his goal to paint the influence that equality of conditions and government by democracy in America exert on civil society, on habits, ideas, and mores

Volume 1 - Part One

External Configuration of North America

Tocqueville describes the Native Americans, and he endorses a kind of noble savage idea of them: in his [native Americans] modes of acting there reigned a habitual reserve and a sort of aristocratic politeness. Tocqueville mentions the mounds found in the Mississippi River Valley and claims that one cannot doubt that another people more civilized, more advanced than it in all things, preceded it in these same regions. Tocqueville accepts the view that while the Native Americans occupied North America, they did not posses it; for [i]t is by agriculture that man appropriates the soil, and the first inhabitants of North America lived from products of the hunt.

On the Point of Departure and Its Importance for the Future of the Anglo-Americans

Peoples always feel [the effects of] their origins. The circumstances that accompanied their birth and served to develop them influence the entire course of the rest of their lives.

In examining America, Tocqueville stresses the importance of its point of departure, or how it was in its early days, and how this initial state of American society can explain so much of what came after it. Uniquely in America, democracy was present from its birth; the initial settlers had no idea of any superiority whatsoever of some over others due to the fact that most of the initial immigrants were not rich men, for it is hardly the happy and the powerful who go into exile, and poverty as well as misfortune are the best guarantees of equality among men. Tocqueville briefly talks about the first English colony in Virginia, and he acknowledges how the influence of slavery, combined with the English character, explains the mores and social state of the South.

Tocqueville gives most of his attention here to the settlers who landed on Plymouth Rock in New England. These pilgrims, who tore themselves away from the sweetness of their native country to obey a purely intellectual need ... made an idea triumph. They, belonging to the sect in England whose austere principles had the name Puritan given to them, feeling persecuted by the government of England and feeling that the rigor of their principles offended by the daily workings of society in which they lived, sought a land so barbarous and so abandoned by the world that they might yet be permitted to live there in their manner and pray to God in freedom. Tocqueville acknowledges the middle class background of the pilgrims. Tocqueville notes how it was until some 50 years after the founding of the colony that they were recognized by Charles II: this contributed to self governance.

Tocqueville describes the laws in New England; these strict laws, which were heavily influenced by the Bible, were not imposed; that they were voted by the free occurrence of all the interested persons themselves; and the mores were still more austere and puritanical than the laws. Tocqueville finds that the principles on which modern constitutions rest were recognized and fixed by the laws in New England from the start: intervention of the people in public affairs, free voting of taxes, responsibility of the agents of power, individual freedom and judgement by jury were established there without discussion and in fact. The New England society handled affairs that were in the interest of all in the public square, within the general assembly of citizens, as in Athens. Tocqueville notes the democratic nature of governance in the colony. On Education, Tocqueville describes the early state of public education, in which society, putting itself in the place of the family, takes possession of the child and takes away from the parents the rights that nature gave them, but which they so poorly knew how to use. Tocqueville, in describing the prison system in America, claims that no one can disengage himself entirely from the past, and he claims that there is an aristocratic nature to bail, which favors the rich.

Social State of the Anglo-Americans

The social state is ordinarily the product of a fact, sometimes of laws, most often of these two causes united; but once it exists, one can consider it as the first cause of most of the laws, customs, and ideas that regulate the conduct of nations; what it does not produce, it modifies.

The social state of the Americans is entirely democratic. It has had this character since the birth of the colonies; it has it even more in our day.

Tocqueville focuses on the role of the inheritance of land in emphasizing the above fact (he is astonished that ancient and modern political writers have not attributed to estate laws a greater influence on the course of human affairs). He talks about primogeniture, and how the equal distribution of property among children has a democratizing effect. While the equal distribution of land has anti-aristocratic effects, it also makes the family present itself as nothing but vague, indeterminate, and uncertain. With the inability to really establish a family in the aristocratic sense, each concentrates on the comfort of the present; he dreams of the establishment of the generation that is going to follow, and nothing more. On Americans' relation to capitalism and commerce, Tocqueville claims that he does not know a country where the love of money holds a larger place in the heart of man and where they profess a more profound scorn for the theory of the permanent equality of goods. Tocqueville notes the effect of the democratic social state on education and intelligence; he believes that democracy produces a society in which so few ignorant and fewer learned men are found. Also, on the difference between American and European education, he says that at fifteen they enter into a career; thus their education most often ends in the period where ours begins.

On the Principle of the Sovereignty of the People in America

While electoral rights were initially confined within certain limits and subordinated to the existence of a property qualification (which was more severe in the South), the American Revolution hastened the spread of democracy.

They [the American people] are the cause and the end of all things; everything comes out of them and everything is absorbed into them.

Necessity of Studying What Takes Place in the Particular States before Speaking of the Government of the Union

The great political principles that govern American society today were born and developed in the state; one cannot doubt it. It is therefore the state that one must know to have the key to all the rest.

Tocqueville remarks on the three levels of democracy in the states of America:

1. township
2. 1. The township is the sole association that is so much in nature that everywhere men are gathered, a township forms by itself
   2. It is generally 2,000-3,000 people.
   3. In affairs of the state, people elect representatives, but in New England, in affairs of the township, except in simple execution of the laws themselves, the body of electros directs the magistrates.
   4. One interesting to note about the government magistrates of early America is that they were not given a fixed salary. Generally, they were paid only in proportion to what they have done.
   5. The townships generally submit to the state when it is a question of interest that is social, which is to say they share with others.

The inhabitant of New England is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he is interested in it because he cooperates in directing it he loves it because he has nothing to complain of in his lot; he places his ambition and his future in it; he mingles in each of the incidents of township life: in this restricted sphere that is within his reach he tries to govern society; he habituates himself in the forms without which freedom proceeds only though revolutions, permeates himself with their spirit, gets a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and finally assembles clear and practical ideas on the nature of his duties as well as the extent of his rights.

2. county

• • The county is created purely for administrative interests.
  • Since the township is too restricted to include the administration of justice, the county forms the first judicial center.
  • The county has ... no political existence

On administration in New England, Tocqueville emphasizes its decentralized nature: nowhere does this exist a center at which the spokes of administrative power converge. That is not to say that administrative power combined is not great: they [the citizens] wanted to arrive at a point where authority is great and the official is small, so that society would continue to be well regulated and remain free. The administrators of society, elected by the people, are kept in line through judicial penalty; justices of peace, appointed by the governor, keep them in line. Above the county magistrates there is, to tell the truth, no longer administrative power but only a governmental power.

3. state

• • The legislative power of the state is entrusted to two assemblies, the Senate and the House of Representatives (what they are ordinarily called, not always).
  • The two houses of legislative power were created to slow the movement of legislation and to allow for the revision of laws.
  • The govern of the state, the supreme magistrate, is placed next to the legislature as a moderator and counsel. He is armed with a veto that permits him to stop or at least slow movement at his will
  • The governor is the commander of the militia and of the armed forces.

Tocqueville discusses the political effects of administrative decentralization in the United States. Tocqueville says of government centralization: I cannot conceive that a nation can live or above all prosper without strong government centralization, but of administrative centralization he says that it is fit only to enervate the peoples who submit to it, because it constantly tends to diminish the spirit of the city in them. Administrative centralization is harmful to the reproduction of strength according to Tocqueville. Tocqueville argues that administrative decentralization is important because a central power cannot gather to itself alone all the details of the life of a great people. While he admits administrative centralization is very good at keeping order, Tocqueville argues that it is bad at progressing society.

There is no country in the world where, after all is said and done, men make as many efforts to create social well-being. I do not know a people who has succeeded in establishing schools as numerous and as efficacious; churches more in touch with the religious needs of the inhabitants; common highways better maintained.

Tocqueville compares man in a place where administrative centralization rules to be basically a foreigner or colonist: indifferent to the destiny of the place that he inhabits ... the greatest changes come about in his country without his concurrence. Tocqueville on the effect of administrative decentralization on man:

He is glorified in the glory of the nation; in the success that it obtains he believes he recognizes his own work, and he is uplifted by it; he rejoices in the general prosperity from which he profits. He has for his native country a sentiment analogous to the one that he feels for his family, and it is still by a sort of selfishness that he takes an interest in the state.

I found Tocqueville's description of man in a state with administrative decentralization to be similar to that of a worker in a lean manufacturing system. It was also funny seeing Tocqueville praise administrative decentralization in its ability to carry out swift justice, it is similar to people who, having no connection to law enforcement, like to do research on crimes and solve them today.

I heard citizens attribute the greatness or the prosperity of their native country to a multitude of reasons; but I heard all of them put provincial freedom first in line and class it at the head of all other advantages.

On Judicial Power in the United States and Its Action on Political Society

The Americans have preserved in the judicial power all the characteristics by which one is accustomed to recognize it:

1. To act as an arbiter
2. To pronounce on particular cases and not general principles
3. To be able to act only when appealed to, to act only when being seized

The immense political power that is given to the judges of America is in the fact that they are permitted to not apply laws that to them might appear to [be] unconstitutional.

In the United States, the Constitution dominates legislators as it does plain citizens. It is therefore the first of laws, and it cannot be modified by a law.

According to Tocqueville, the power to pronounce on the unconstitutionality of laws still forms one of the most powerful barriers that has ever been raised against the tyranny of political assemblies.

On Political Judgement in the United States

Political judgement means the right of a political body to judge. In the United States, the House of Representatives has the right to denounce a guilty magistrate, and the Senate punishes him. Unlike in Europe (at the time), where magistrates can accuse anyone and where they can sentence the guilty to anything, in the United States, only public officials can be accused by the representatives, and the Senate only has the power to strip the public official of his office. Afterwards, the guilty may be tried by the people in normal courts.

Europeans, in establishing political tribunals, had for their principal object to punish the guilty; Americans, to take power away from them.

Tocqueville acknowledges that political judgement could be utilized by the majority and lead to tyranny.

On the Federal Constitution

The original colonies stuck together to fight the British. In the Article of Confederation days, it was found that America could not find enough resources to stand up to the Indian nations and to pay the interest on debts contracted during the War of Independence. Close to perishing, it officially declared its impotence and appealed to the constituent power. Tocqueville declares that the end of the American revolution coincides with the ratification of the constitution by all states in 1789.

He acknowledges that in the constitution, the rights of the federal government to handle general matters was the exception, and the state governments remained the common rule. Tocqueville acknowledges the fight between those who wanted to make the Union a league of independent states, ... [and] others [who] wanted to unite all the inhabitants of the former colonies into one and the same people to be the main issue addressed in the constitution. The constitution found a middle ground in that it gave smaller states more power in the senate and larger states more power in the house of representatives. Tocqueville realizes that a minority of the nation could impose its will on the majority but claims that here is such an irresistible force in the legal expression of the will of a whole people that when the majority comes to express itself through the organ of the House of Representatives, the Senate finds itself very weak in its presence. The main in difference in terms of power between the Senate and the House of Representatives is the fact that the treaties must be ratified by the Senate.

On executive power, Tocqueville notes that the constitution aims to create an executive power that depended on the majority and that was nonetheless strong enough by itself to act freely in its sphere. He notes the veto power of the president as being a sort of appeal to the people. Tocqueville contrasts the president with the King of France: the President takes no part in making laws, while the King of France participates in making laws; the president is checked by the legislature for many of actions, while the King of France's power is more unlimited; and the president is checked by the people with an election every 4 years. While Tocqueville notes that the president is checked and his power is quite small, he does realize that the president's power can grow much during wartime; however, America, being protected by the sea, is hardly under threat of war, so this power remains dormant. Another difference between America and France is that America can still continue to operate when the president disagrees with the actions of the legislature or vice-versa, while in France, since the King takes part in making laws, the government comes to a halt when there are differences between the legislative body and the King.

On the election of the president, Tocqueville tells us that the dangers of the elective system ... grow in direct proportion to the influence exerted by the executive power on affairs of the state. Tocqueville notes that we have not had someone risk their life to become president because of the lack of executive power at the time and because of the fixed salary of the president. Tocqueville notes that near elections, the president essentially stops operating in his role. Jefferson six weeks before his election in 1809:

I am so near the moment of retiring that I take no part in affairs beyond the expression of an opinion. I think it fair that my successor should now originate those measures of which he will be charged with the execution and responsibility...

On elections and federal employees, very relevant today with the firings of Trump and Musk:

The Americans rightly thought that the head of the executive power, to fulfill his mission and to bear the weight of responsibility as a whole, ought to remain, as much as possible, free to choose his agents by himself and dismiss them at will; the legislative body watches over the president rather than directing him. Hence it follows that at each new election, it is as if the fate of all federal employees is in doubt.

In summary on elections, the circumstances of the time effect the power of the executive and consequently, the danger of elections; one can easily see that during contentious times and when the executive power holds more weight, there have been more revolutions or dangerous protests.
Tocqueville notes that in order to decrease the amount of danger found in elections, it is important that the election results are swift, and that the electoral college is initially used instead of legislators, since the legislators are more easily corruptible.

On the role of the President as party leader:

parties in the United States as elsewhere feel the need to group themselves around one man in order more easily to reach the intelligence of the crowd. They therefore generally make use of the name of the presidential candidate as a symbol; they personify their theories in him. So, the parties have a great interest in determining the election in their favor, not so much to make their doctrines triumph with the aid of the president-elect as to show by his election that those doctrines have acquired a majority

On the reelection of the president, while Tocqueville acknowledges the influences the talents or the character of a single man exerts on the destiny of a whole people, above all in difficult circumstances and in times of crisis, he says that the principle of reelection ... renders the corrupting influence of elective governments more extensive and more dangerous and that it tends to degrade the political morality of the people and replace patriotism with cleverness. Tocqueville acknowledges that the threat of reelection has made the president weak.

On the creation of federal courts, Tocqueville acknowledges that there needs to be federal courts in order for there to be a single source of truth on general matters: there cannot be 24 (number of states at the time) different state supreme courts all deciding general matters; interpreting fundamental laws in this nature is contrary o reason. The president has the power to choose the Supreme Court Justice after having taken advice from the Senate. The supreme courts were set up so that states couldn't decide matters of nation interest, and in a way, this was a blow to state's rights.

On jurisdiction, the persons and matter of the case determine whether the federal courts will oversee the case. The matters that are federal include: cases involving federal law, cases that involve state laws which can destroy or alter rights acquired by virtue of a contract, and probably others that I am not listing here.

On the supreme court:

It is charged with the interpretation of laws and treaties; questions relative to maritime commerce and all those in general that are connected to the law of nations are within its exclusive competence. One can even say that its prerogatives are almost entirely political although its constitution is entirely judicial.

Tocqueville claims that the Federal constitution is superior to the state constitutes dues to the fact that framers could draw inspiration from the state constitutions and due to the superiority of the character of the legislators. The legislators of the union were almost all remarkable for their enlightenment, more remarkable still for their patriotism. On the differences between the federal and state constitutions, Tocqueville draws attention to the fact that the federal gives legislators longer term limits and the fact the executive has more power in the federal constitution. On the dangers that threaten democracies:

Two principal dangers threaten democracies:
Complete enslavement of the legislative power to the will of the electoral body.
Concentration in the legislative power of all the other powers of government.
The legislators of the states have favored the development of these dangers. The legislators of the Union did what they could to render them less formidable.

On what distinguishes the federal constitution of the United States from all other Federal Constitutions of the time, Tocqueville mainly talks about how the federal government of the Union kept the right to oversee for themselves the execution of the laws while other confederations of the time (he mentions Switzerland, the German Empire, the Republic of the Netherlands) left the execution of the laws to the members of their confederations (or states). In other words, the federal government of America more closely governs the people while other confederations more closely govern their member states. This leads other confederations to have factions that are more likely to rebel.

On the advantage of the federal government generally and its special utility in America, Tocqueville draws attention to the fact that beyond being comprised of states, Tocqueville emphasizes the fact that greater republics (larger republics) are infinitely more exposed [to peril] than smaller ones. Tocqueville compares great and small nations and their advantages and disadvantages and then claims that the federal system of the US was created to unite the diverse advantages resulting from the greatness and smallness of nations.

Tocqueville criticizes federal systems for the complication of means that they employ in being adversarial with their member states and for the weaknesses of the government of their unions. On the weakness of the Union, Tocqueville uses the example of Connecticut and Massachusetts disobeying orders to send troops North in the war of 1812. Tocqueville gives credit to the common culture of the people of the US and the fact that it does not face many wars in why it has so far survived.

Volume 1 - Part Two

How One Can Say Strictly that in the United States People Govern

The people govern because they choose their representatives, who vote on state laws, every year and because it is evident that the opinions, the prejudices, the interests, and even the passions of the people can find no lasting obstacles that prevent them from taking effect in the daily direction of society.

On Parties in the United States

Tocqueville draws a distinct between great parties and small parties in the United States:

The original parties of the United States were the Federalist party and the Democratic Republican party. The Federalist party sought to restrict popular power and make its doctrines apply to the Constitution, and being headed by most all great men of the revolution and being aided by the anarchic times of the Articles of Confederation, it enjoyed success from the election of Washington to the election of Jefferson. Tocqueville is of the opinion that the coming of the Federalists to power is ... one of the most fortunate events that accompanied the birth of the great American Union.

What came after the Federalists and Democratic Republicans, the Republican and Democratic parties, were small parties who argue over material interests. Tocqueville uses the example of the parties' argument over the Tariff Act of 1828, which had opposite effects for the Republican, industrialized North and the Democratic, ag-based South.

Tocqueville claims that aristocratic or democratic passions are readily found at the foundation of all parties. Tocqueville talks about the rich, and how they secretly despise democracy but publicly attempt to promote it. As a conclusion, Tocqueville declares that the two great weapons that the parties employ in order to succeed are newspapers and associations.

On Freedom of the Press in the United States

Tocqueville claims that freedom of the press makes its power felt not only over political opinions, but also over all opinions of men. It modifies not only laws, but mores. The aristocrat loves freedom of the press per accidens, for its existence is much better than any kind of censorship. He appreciates freedom of the press for its justice in showing the oppression caused by agents of power when there is no other recourse to keep those in check. Tocqueville claims that freedom of the press and the sovereignty of the people have a correlative relationship (if you can choose who to vote for, then you should be able to choose your news source), and he comments on the lack of lawsuits against the press in the United States. He contrasts the press in the United States with the press in France; the press in the United states is more decentralized, composed of less educated men, and focused on the actions rather than the principles of men, whereas the press in France is more centralized, more educated, and more focused on principles. The effect of the decentralization of press in the United States, the people who write the news, and the focus of the news is that the press contribute indirectly to the maintenance of public tranquility. Tocqueville closes this chapter by talking about belief and opinion.

This is an ongoing note that will turn into a Goodreads article. This book is long and I can not read it all at once.

On Political Association in the United States

On the Government of Democracy in America

What are the Real Advantages that American Society Derives from the Government of Democracy

On the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States and its Effects

On What Tempers the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States

On the Principal Causes Tending to Maintain a Democratic Republic in the United States

Some Considerations on the Present State and the Probable Future of the Three Races that Inhabit the Territory of the United States

Volume 2

Volume 2 - Part One

On the Philosophic Method of the Americans

On the Principal Source of Beliefs among Democratic Peoples

Why the Americans Show More Aptitude and Taste for General Ideas than their English Fathers

Why the Americans Have Never Been as Passionate as the French for General Ideas in Political Matters

How, in the United States, Religion Knows How to Make Use of Democratic Instincts

On the Progress of Catholicism in the United States

What Makes the Mind of Democratic Peoples Lean Toward Pantheism

How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of Indefinite Perfectibility of Men

Why the Americans Apply Themselves to the Practices of the Sciences Rather than to the Theory

In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts

Why the Americans at the Same Time Raise Such Little and Such Great Monuments

The Literary Face of Democratic Centuries

On the Literary Industry

Why the Study of Greek and Latin Literature is Particularly Useful in Democratic Societies

How American Democracy Has Modified the English Language

On Some Sources of Poetry in Democratic Nations

Why American Writers and Orators are Often Bombastic

Some Observations on the Theater of Democratic Peoples

On Some Tendencies Particular to Historians in Democratic Centuries

On Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States

Volume 2 - Part Two

Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and More Lasting Love for Equality than for Freedom

On Individualism in Democratic Countries

How Individualism is Greater at the End of a Democratic Revolution than in Any Other Period

How Americans Combat Individualism with Free Institutions

On the Use that the Americans Make of Association in Civil Life

On the Relation between Associations and Newspapers

Relations Between Civil Associations and Political Associations

How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Doctrine of Self-Interest Well Understood

How the Americans Apply the Doctrine of Self-Interest Well Understood in the Matter of Religion

On the Taste for Material Well-Being in America

On the Particular Effects that the Love of Material Enjoyments Produces in Democratic Centuries

Why Certain Americans Display Such an Exalted Spiritualism

How the Taste for Material Enjoyments among Americans is United with Love of Freedom and with Care for Public Affairs

How Religions Beliefs at Times Turn the Souls of the Americans toward Immaterial Enjoyments

How the Excessive Love of Well-Being Can be Harmful to Well-Being

How in Times of Equality and Doubt it is Important to Move Back to the Object of Human Actions

Why among Americans All Honest Professions are Reputed Honorable

What Makes Almost All Americans Incline toward Industrial Progressions

How Aristocracy Could Issue from Industry

Volume 2 - Part Three

How Mores Become Milder as Conditions are Equalized

How Democracy Renders the Habitual Relations of the Americans Simpler and Easier

How the Americans Have so Little Oversensitivity in their Country and Show Themselves to be so Oversensitive to Ours

Consequences of the Preceding Three Chapters

How Democracy Modifies the Relations of Servant and Master

How Democratic Institutions and Mores Tend to Raise the Price and Shorten the Duration of Leases

Influence of Democracy on Wages

Influence of Democracy on the Family

Education of Girls in the United States

How the Girl is Found beneath the Features of the Wife

How Equality of Conditions Contributes to Maintaining Good Mores in America

How the Americans Understand the Equality of Man and Woman

How Equality Naturally Divides the Americans into a Multitude of Particular Little Societies

Some Reflections on American Manners

On the Gravity of the Americans and Why It Does Not Prevent Their Often Doing Ill-Considered Things

Why the National Vanity of the Americans Is More Restive and More Quarrelsome than That of the English

How the Aspect of Society in the United States Is at Once Agitated and Monotonous

On Honor in the United States and in Democratic Societies

Why One Finds So Many Ambitious Men in the United States and So Few Great Ambitions

On the Industry in Place-Hunting in Certain Democratic Nations

Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare

Why Democratic Peoples Naturally Desire Peace and Democratic Armies Naturally [Desire] War

Which Is the Most Warlike and the Most Revolutionary Class in Democratic Armies

What Makes Democratic Armies Weaker than Other Armies When Entering into a Campaign and More Formidable When War Is Prolonged

On Discipline in Democratic Armies

Some Considerations on War in Democratic Societies

Volume 2 - Part Four

Equality Naturally Gives Men the Taste for Free Institutions

That the Idea of Democratic Peoples in the Matter of the Government are Naturally Favorable to the Concentration of Powers

That the Sentiments of Democratic Peoples are in Accord with their Ideas to Bring them to Concentrate Power

On Some Particular and Accidental Causes that Serve to Bring a Democratic People to Centralize Power or Turn it Away from That

That among European Nations of Our Day Sovereign Power Increases are Less Stable

What Kind of Despotism Nations Have to Fear

Continuation of the Preceding Chapter

General View of the Subject

Review

PLACEHOLDER