Comment & Debate
James Boyle. “The initiative and referendum: its folly, fallacies, and failure.” (1912): “Laws but to decide the exact form in which they shall be presented for passage without giving the vast majority of the voters 92 per cent either directly or through their representatives any opportunity to amend them In this respect the modern Initiative is far inferior in principle to the ancient Pure Democracy for the latter theoretically anyhow possessed the principle of majority rule No law can formulate itself the authority to formulate a law is equal to th power to pass it if the latter power does not in elude the right to change it or amend it before it is passed Therefore under the Initiative and Referendum the majority 92 or 95 per cent find themselves in this predicament they must either accept the bill which the 8 per cent has drafted for them on its own motion and without consulting any other authority or proportion of citizens the majority must either do this or they must succumb to Philosophic Anarchism the absence of any Law except that of the individual will Quite apart from the advantage of having received careful scrutiny and the safeguard of having to pass through several Committees a Legislative Law has this immense superiority over an Initiative Law it is formulated by a majority of the voters of the State in a Representative sense that is the Committees which recommend it are selected directly or indirectly…”