This book has sought to illuminate an important but opaque aspect of Rousseau's political thought: the relationship between the people and the laws or, more broadly, lawmaking and liberty in the theory of the Social Contract. In this book I have attempted to show that the role of citizens in lawmaking in the Genevan's state is more active and robust than many scholars conclude today. How the general will is made known is by lawmaking as much as by what precedes or follows the popular vote because Rousseau recognizes important bene­fits to voting as a political activity. It is not his belief that an expert elite ought to be the locus of power in his patrie but, rather, the center of gravity ought always to be the people. In this respect, popular sovereignty is less the location of political authority than the vitality and assertiveness of its exercise. “Consultation” is what is most consequential to civil freedom as “it is through the legislative power” that “the State subsists” (CS, III:xi, 188/424; IV:I, 199/438). Toward this end, beyond relocating or reducing this popular power surreptitiously, Rousseau goes to extraordinary lengths to shelter its force from government's pincers for as long a time as possible; he protects and even enhances the power of the people beyond the formal vote in seminal ways. Significantly, the ultimate long-term futility of this constitutional endeavor does not diminish the ends toward which it is directed or make his efforts any less interesting to political scientists.