Appendix A
On the Constitutional Meaning of “The People”
The American constitutional tradition employs the phrase “The People” as a term of art. From the founding era forward, it has denoted not all persons physically present within the territory, but the sovereign political community -- those who constitute the body from which the government derives its authority. In this tradition, “The People” are not merely participants in politics, but the source of all legitimate governing authority -- legislative, executive, judicial, and coercive -- which institutions may ultimately exercise only by delegation.
This understanding is rooted in first principles. Governments, as conceived by the American Founders, are instituted by a people to secure rights and promote the common good. Their legitimacy arises not from mere administration over territory, but from consent. Consent, in turn, presupposes political membership: the capacity to authorize power, to participate in self-government, to bear civic obligations, and to retain the right to reform or replace governing institutions.
Accordingly, the founding generation distinguished carefully among persons, citizens, and The People. The Constitution extends legal protections to persons, regardless of status, through guarantees of due process and equal justice. It defines qualifications and allegiances with reference to citizens. And it reserves the ultimate source of political authority -- ratification, representation, rights retained, and powers reserved -- to The People.
Throughout the constitutional text, this distinction is consistent. The Preamble announces that the Constitution is ordained and established by “We, The People.” The Ninth and Tenth Amendments refer to rights and powers retained by “The People.” The First, Second, and Fourth Amendments secure rights belonging to “The People.” In each instance, the phrase refers to the same collective body: the sovereign political community that formed, authorized, and governs the constitutional order.
Founding-era usage confirms this understanding. Political writings, state constitutions, and early judicial opinions consistently associate “The People” with those who compose the polity -- those who consent, who are represented, and who participate in self-government. By contrast, non-members of the political community were understood to be owed protection under law, but not to possess political authority or sovereign rights.
This distinction was not regarded as exclusionary, but structural. Self-government requires a defined body capable of governing itself. To collapse the distinction between political membership and physical presence is to sever representation from consent and to convert republican government into administration without authorship.
Representation, in the American system, was therefore understood to flow from The People as the sovereign -- not from population as such. The House of Representatives was intended to reflect The People who constituted the political community, so that laws would be made by representatives accountable to those who authorized them. Where representation is allocated on a basis disconnected from political membership, accountability is diluted and consent obscured.
On the Dilution of Suffrage
When legislative districts are apportioned based on total population rather than citizen population, the voting power of citizens in districts with high numbers of non-citizens is mathematically inflated. This dilutes the suffrage of citizens in the rest of the Union.
To count foreign nationals for the purpose of allocating American political power is to invite foreign influence into the heart of the Republic. This reform does not denigrate the non-citizen; it honors the Naturalized Citizen. It affirms that the path to political representation lies not in mere presence, but in the deliberate assumption of the duties of American citizenship.
Nothing in this understanding denies the dignity, humanity, or legal protection owed to all persons. Equal justice under law applies to persons. All legitimate governing authority, however, belongs to The People. The distinction preserves both liberty and legitimacy by ensuring that authority remains grounded in consent rather than presence alone.
This appendix is offered not to advance novelty, but to restate a principle long assumed:
that in the American constitutional order, “The People” are those who constitute the sovereign political community, and that self-government depends on preserving the alignment between consent, representation, and authority.