The deeper intellectual wellspring, though, harks back to the definitions of what a representative democracy is supposed to be, as articulated by the nation’s founding framers, especially James Madison, the fourth president. In the Federalist Papers, a series of essays written in part by Madison in support of the Constitution, he pushed strongly for a barrier between the passions of the popular will and sober governance of the nation through a legislative branch. The lawsuit, filed last year, will have its first major hearing in federal District Court in Denver on Feb. 15.

“A legislature unable to raise and appropriate funds cannot meet its primary constitutional obligations,” the Colorado lawsuit reads. “Since the passage of Tabor in 1992, the State of Colorado has experienced a slow, inexorable slide into fiscal dysfunction.”

Some historians and legal scholars said the suit tilts at windmills, pushing an argument — the constitutional defense of representative government — that federal courts have rarely recognized and that broad segments of society, in the age of Twitter, WikiLeaks and disdain for Congress, do not see as worth breaking a sweat to defend.

“When you start arguing against these initiatives and referendum, you’re actually on strong historical grounds with the founding fathers,” said Kevin M. Wagner, an assistant professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

But we are not in raw frontier America anymore, Professor Wagner said, and the literate, educated and plugged-in electorate of today fully expects to make its voice heard.