This book takes seriously the We the People form of sovereignty. With the People established as the Principal in the Preamble, her agents become the Executive, the Congress, and the Judiciary. Akhil Amar has argued for restoring the Preamble to “its proper place as the Founders' foundation.” Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius in The Federalist No. 84, emphasized the theory of “popular rights” inherent in the Constitution. Can this theory be invoked to formulate an argument against outsourcing significant government functions?

The Founders were not greatly concerned with the line between private and public. During the revolutionary period, they were delighted to receive help from wherever it originated, as the Marquis de Lafayette's presence at Washington's side testifies. But the Constitution was more careful. It might be read as endorsing private contractors in only one instance, the Marque and Reprisal Clause, which authorized the long-ago repudiated practice of employing privateers to do the work of the Navy. But that Clause, even if revived, would support the arguments advanced here because it requires Congress to initiate privatizing actions. It does not leave it to the Executive or the states to do so unilaterally.

Other delegations in the Constitution by the Principal to her agents are made directly, under the assumption that those agents would themselves be the ones to act or at least would devolve their significant duties to other public officials. These are the persons generally charged with forming the administration, a concept familiar to the Founders.