The Changing Idea of Popular Sovereignty in Early American Constitutionalism: Breaking Away from European Patterns

T he interpretation of the idea of popular sovereignty in American constitutionalism tends to be confounded with the idea of liberty as the overriding principle. Because of a number of quite different interpretations, however, popular sovereignty calls for a more thorough investigation, clearly distinct from the idea of liberty. To that end, this article tries to investigate two different questions. First, how did the idea of popular sovereignty first appear and change over time in American constitutionalism from the spring of 1776 up to the federal Constitution of 1787?1 Second, how was popular sovereignty finally