The Volokh Conspiracy

Eugene Volokh · 14 Oct 2026

Eugene Volokh did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
The distinction between a republic and a democracy is a false dichotomy.

Their wordsI often hear people argue (often quite militantly) that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. But that's a false dichotomy.
Our reading
The United States is both a republic and a democracy.

Their wordsThe 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. Some lawmaking is done this way, on the state and local levels, but it's only a tiny fraction of all lawmaking. But we are a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy.

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