Mini 3's should prepare for finals questions related to the relative pros and cons of different systems of government (principally autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy). I pull a lot of material from the opening set of slides - Why do I have to take this class? You can expect to see maybe 5 - 10 finals questions from that set of slides.
As you'll note, the biggest suspicion the framers of the Constitution had about democracies was that they tended to turn into mobocracy - the fancy term is ochlocracy. The term is obviously biased. Who wants to be ruled by a mob? It can also refer to rule by a mass of people. The framers argued that these forms of government were unstable, and could lead to tyranny of the majority. A close reading of their comments reveals that they were also worried the democracies that were developing in the states under the Articles of Confederation were undermining their power.
One of their concerns was that an uneducated population could be persuaded to become violent by a demagogue - "a political leader in a democracy who appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudices, and ignorance of the lower classes in order to gain power and promote political motives." This could create the instability that could not only spell the end of the democratic republic they sought to establish, but also allow a numeric majority the ability to dominate a numeric minority.
This points out a tension between majority rules and minority rights that I try to highlight in key section of the class - it plays a key role in the design and role of the courts as well as the nature of the Bill of Rights.
Aside from pointing your attention in this direction, I'm writing this because as I was working on the notes for the Supreme Court and stumbled across the court case of Moore v. Dempsey which involves accusations that an Arkansas mob was preventing the criminal justice system from working in the neutral fashion we expect it to.
It seems to me to be a good example of mobocracy in action
Here are links for background on the case
- Moore v. Dempsey.
- Elaine Race Riot.
- Sharecropping.
- Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America.
- Robert L. Hill.
The incident appears to have begun when a group of African American sharecroppers met in order to develop a strategy for addressing grievances they had against the landlords they worked for. The meeting was interrupted by a group of white men, shots were exchanged (it was uncertain who shot first) and one of the white men was killed.
The links can give you detail on what happened next (lots of violence), but one of the eventual results was a trial process dominated by the majority white population. The rights of the African American defendants were not recognized, which raised issues that ultimately led the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The justices would rule that the national government had the power to compel state courts to provide due process guarantees for criminal defendants, especially if the process was tainted by the a dominant mob.
Click here for the decision.
