In the Social Contract the most politically significant activity of the people is the ratifying of the laws. Unlike representative systems of government in which power is shared between citizens and their chosen delegates or allotted to the latter with periodic checks, the final arbiter of the laws is always the people in a well-ordered state. It is the people alone who legislate all of the constitutional laws and it is they who, by way of the institutional restraints that I describe in Chapter 6, exercise implicit control over executive decrees. If a measure is enacted that proves to be unpopular a citizenry may replace the government or any future regime that allows such measures to remain in force, by right. Although such an outcome ought to be unlikely it is not forbidden or made to be so cumbersome as to be impossible, even with a proportional majority. Rousseau proposes a relatively high threshold for the vote not because he seeks to empower a chosen elite surreptitiously but, rather, to avoid any need to disempower a chosen elite overtly or covertly. Stable laws require stable majorities.

As discussed earlier, the process of ratifying the laws begins with their formal drafting. Similar to statecraft in the ancient world, at the foundation of Rousseau's state this vital function is the duty of the lawgiver and afterward it falls upon the shoulders of the people and to those experts from whom they seek assistance.