Additionally, twenty-three states use referenda. A considerable number of local jurisdictions also permit people to make laws. American citizens have a hand in making laws in forty-two states. Even though these laws are different in each state, the constitutional lawmaking powers of the people have been repeatedly sustained by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, pundits, government officials, scholars and assorted elites view initiative lawmaking with suspicion because the initiative process, as they see it, is not sufficiently deliberative.
Deliberation is vital to lawmaking.
The charge is accurate. The original reformers writing these laws, with little legislative experience, naively failed to realize the need for detailed, deliberative, legislative procedures. Moreover, since their enactment, initiative laws have been controlled and administered by representative government officials increasingly to the disadvantage of citizen lawmakers. Yet, opponents still continue to advance the groundless charges that the majority of people, if given power, will oppress minorities and that they will bankrupt their political jurisdictions by showering their treasuries on themselves. Nowhere, in the last one hundred years, have these charges been realized where people can legislate.