OPINION — Two-hundred, fifty years ago, delegates to Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were wrestling with a question about which Americans still are arguing: How much democracy is enough?
The constitution they created would make Pennsylvania the most radically democratic state in America. The experiment didn’t end well. The commonwealth’s constitution begins with a Declaration of Rights: “All power,” it states, is “inherent in, and consequently derived from, the people.”
However, Pennsylvania’s revolutionaries went considerably further. They created a powerful single-house legislature, elected annually. There was no independent governor with a veto and no upper legislative chamber to slow popular majorities. Executive authority was entrusted to a president and a council, while a periodically elected “Council of Censors” was supposed to police constitutional violations.
