John McGinnis and Ilya Somin consider the idea that achieving democracy is the primary purpose of the Constitution. They note that the Constitution includes a number of principles, including federalism, that restrict democracy in some way. Somin warns against conflating “democracy” with “good”: “if anything good is by definition also democratic and anything democratic is by definition also good, then democracy ceases to be a useful concept for constitutional theory, or any other type of intellectually serious analysis.”
