Constitution- likewise defended the Constitution in that convention by describing it as implementing 'democracy' (as opposed to 'despotism'), and without the need to even add the qualifier 'representative.' Likewise, James Wilson, one of the main drafters of the Constitution and one of the first Supreme Court justices, defended the Constitution in 1787 by speaking of the three forms of government being the 'monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical,' and said that in a democracy the sovereign power is 'inherent in the people, and is either exercised by themselves or by their representatives.' Chief Justice John Marshall-who helped lead the fight in the 1788 Virginia Convention for ratifying the U.S. Tucker's Blackstone likewise uses 'democracy' to describe a representative democracy, even when the qualifier 'representative' is omitted. George Tucker in his 1803 edition of Blackstone so did Thomas Jefferson in 1815. But even in that era, 'representative democracy' was understood as a form of democracy, alongside 'pure democracy': John Adams used the term 'representative democracy' in 1794 so did Noah Webster in 1785 so did St. 10), as well as other numbers of the Federalist papers.

Some framing-era commentators made arguments that distinguished 'democracy' and 'republic' see, for instance, the Federalist (No. And the same two meanings of 'democracy' (sometimes direct democracy, sometimes popular self-government more generally) existed at the founding of the republic as well. But we are a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy.

Some lawmaking is done this way, on the state and local levels, but it's only a tiny fraction of all lawmaking. The United States is not a direct democracy, in the sense of a country in which laws (and other government decisions) are made predominantly by majority vote. A common definition of 'democracy' is, 'Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives'-we are that, too. A common definition of 'republic' is, to quote the American Heritage Dictionary, 'A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them'-we are that. I often hear people argue (often quite militantly) that the United States is a republic, not a democracy.

Democracy vs republic