In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek identified constitutionalism ('the principle of legal limitation of power by higher principles to Parliament itself') as the key US contribution to politics. This principle of constitutionally limited government, he argued, used 'inviolable individual rights' to bind temporary majorities. While the United States was founded on a British tradition of liberty, he remarked elsewhere, South America was rooted in the French Revolution and 'overly influenced by the totalitarian type of ideologies' of popular sovereignty.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 361