A key goal of the Framers, as noted earlier, was to create a Senate differently constituted from the other chamber so that it could check the popular passions that might overly influence legislation emanating from the directly elected House.
To foster values such as deliberation, reflection, and continuity, the Framers made three important decisions. First, they set the senatorial term of office at six years even though the duration of a Congress is two years. The Senate is a "continuing body" with only one-third of its membership up for election at any one time.
As Article I, section 3, states: "Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. These lawmakers were influenced, respectively, by the public mood of the voters in November and ; thus, some of them might act collectively as a "brake" and block or slow down floor consideration of issues debated during the campaigns.
Second, to be a Senator, individuals must meet certain constitutional qualifications. For example, to hold office, Senators must be 30 years of age and nine years a citizen; House members are to be 25 years of age and seven years a citizen. The Framers expected Senators to be more seasoned and experienced than House members.
Unlike House members, the selection of senators was done by the state legislatures, which bolstered the states' role as a counterweight to the national government and insulated the Senate from popular pressures. The House and Senate share lawmaking authority, but the Framers assigned special "advice and consent" prerogatives exclusively to the Senate. Under Article II, section 2, the Senate functions as a unicameral body when it considers 1 the ratification of treaties, which require approval by a two-thirds vote, or 2 presidential nominations for high governmental positions such as Federal judges, ambassadors, or Cabinet officers all of whom require Senate consent by a majority vote.
The Framers assigned the advice and consent responsibilities to the Senate but not the House because of certain characteristics embedded in that institution, such as stability, a longer time perspective, and its smaller size.
As one of the Framers Pierce Butler of South Carolina noted, treaty negotiations "always required the greatest secrecy, which could not be expected in a large body" like the House. What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation , to preserve unawed and uninfluenced the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers?
The Senate, like any legislative institution, constantly changes in big and little ways. If the Framers returned today to visit the Senate, they would surely recognize that it remains the preeminent legislative forum for protecting minority rights and for debating and refining the great issues of the day.
They would continue to find that many of their fundamental principles—two Senators from each state, the advice and consent role, or the impeachment prerogative—continue to govern the Senate's composition and activity.
To be sure, they would likely be awe-struck by the country's many changes: the demographic diversity among the 50 states; the size and reach of the federal establishment; the rise of presidential power; the cost of campaigns; the role of political parties; the extent of the nation's international obligations; and numerous other societal, technological, or medical developments.
They would soon discover a significant change to their handiwork, however: today's Senators no longer are elected by state legislatures. In the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified providing for the direct election of Senators. The Framers would probably view this as the most significant constitutional change affecting the Senate. The election of Senators by state legislatures lasted for more than years until the two institutions that were vested politically in the procedure—the U.
Senate and the state legislatures—opted for the popular election of Senators. Two words epitomize the fundamental drivers of the change: democracy and deadlock.
The direct election of Senators was triggered by the Progressive movement of the s and early s which advocated an agenda of democratic reform, such as women's suffrage, the direct primary, and the direct election of senators. Progressive leaders wanted to end the influence of powerful special interests, especially corporations, over state legislatures; block the purchase of Senate seats; blunt the influence of party bosses in determining who state lawmakers should select; and make senators directly answerable to the people for their actions or inactions.
For example, the spread of direct primaries in many states "led to voters expressing their choice for senator on the primary ballot. Although not legally binding on the legislatures, the popular choice was likely to be accepted. The second major stimulus for the Seventeenth Amendment involved the often contentious state legislative deadlocks in electing Senators. Senate unusual among upper chambers: it shares legislative power equally with the House of Representatives; it operates under a set of rules that vests enormous power in each senator; and when majorities rule in the Senate it is only by leave of minorities.
The Senate is thus the only legislative body in the world that we are aware of that does not operate by majority rule. These features of the Senate make it even more deliberative, aristocratic, and oligarchic than one would expect merely from reading the text of the U.
It is all of these features of the Senate taken together that render it the lynchpin of the American constitutional system. The Senate is widely viewed with more disdain and less respect today than it has at any other time in American history.
It is common to look back upon the nineteenth century as a golden era in which the Senate was widely viewed as the home of great orators and great statesmen— such as Henry Clay of Kentucky—and monumental debates—such as the great debates over protectionist tariffs in and the Compromise of , which featured memorable speeches by Clay, Senator Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, and Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina.
Today, few if any people think of any sitting Senators as great orators or great statesmen. Today, almost no one expects more from the Senate than the House, which even the Framers had viewed with disdain. The Supreme Court has not embraced that view, at least fully. It has cited, more than once, the changes wrought by the Seventeenth Amendment—along with other developments such as the increase in the size and authority of congressional staffs, the growing influence of lobbyists and special interests, and the need to be perpetually raising money to stay in office—as necessitating judicial review in order to protect against flaws within the federal legislative process that could lead to congressional overreaching at the expense of State sovereignty.
In another line of cases arising under the Eleventh Amendment, the Court has consistently struck down federal laws forcing States to relinquish their immunity from paying damages in federal court. The Court has also overturned federal laws commandeering any part of state government from doing something contrary to its will. Even if the Seventeenth Amendment weakened the connections between the Senate and State interests, the Court still seems to care a great deal about the latter.
One theory is the rise of corruption. Another theory has to do with insularity. His argument extends to all public servants, not just Senators, but there is some reason to believe that today Senators rarely are more than—Senators. Daniel Webster, for example, was one of the greatest lawyers of the nineteenth century—he argued more than cases in the Supreme Court while serving in the House of Representatives at different times as a representative from New Hampshire and Massachusetts, in the Senate, and as Secretary of State under three different presidents.
One is hard pressed to find anyone in the Senate coming close to the standard set by Webster. The idea that Senators might have fallen prey, along with House members and other public servants, to a system that drains or dilutes their passion for the common good is likely to resonate with many people, though it is unclear to what extent the Seventeenth Amendment is the cause.
This decline has coincided with increases in voting along party lines and, perhaps as a result of all these factors, the proliferation of procedural obstacles to getting things done. With increased demands for action, the Senate has responded with more obstacles. The number of veto gates has increased, so that it has become harder, not easier, for legislative business, including judicial and other nominations, to get to the Senate floor for final debate. For example, the filibuster grew increasingly effective over the twentieth century as a way for substantial minorities within the Senate to block floor votes on a wide variety of matters, including civil rights legislation.
To be sure, the filibuster was a potent weapon throughout Senate history, famously blocking final Senate votes on major civil rights legislation for more than a century. What might have made the filibuster worse than ever before was the so-called two-track system, which then-Majority Leader Mike Mansfield implemented in It allowed the mere threat of a filibuster to sidetrack legislative business, including nominations.
The way it worked was that, once nothing more than a threat was made, the matter being threatened was set aside, and other legislative business went forward. That scheme undoubtedly provided incentives to filibuster, and judicial filibusters increased throughout the s and the administration of George W.
Bush and the first term of President Obama. The decision by the Democratic Senate majority in to disallow filibusters of judicial and executive branch nominations has removed one obstacle to judicial confirmations, but Senators in the majority retained many other procedural mechanisms for obstructing nominations.
The confirmation of lower court judges has reached an all-time low, not because of the filibuster and not because they lack merit, but rather because a majority in the Senate that is controlled by one party has decided, in an election year, to deny the President of the opposite party the opportunity to fill any more judgeships, including the Supreme Court. Yet that is not all. In order to keep the President from exercising his power to make recess appointments, the Senate began the practice, while George W.
Bush was President, of holding pro forma sessions—incredibly brief sessions, rarely more than 30 seconds, allowing the Senate to call itself into a formal session every other day, even though most Senators are away or on break. Noel Canning , the practice is controversial.
To some, this kind of obstruction is welcome because it preserves the constitutional status quo, at least until the next election. While the Senate has historically been a place where even important legislative business often got slowed down if not sometimes blocked permanently, it now rarely happens in a way that involves Senate debate or that the public can see.
But the Constitution succeeded beyond even the hopes of its strongest advocates. We have become a nation. Why do you think the delegates voted to keep their discussions secret? Do you think they should have? What were the major debates over the Constitution? What compromises were reached in each?
If you had been a delegate, would you have agreed to each of these compromises? One of the major compromises in the Constitutional Convention was between the small states and big states.
The small states wanted each state to have the same number of representatives in Congress. The big states wanted representation based on population. The compromise was to have one house of Congress the House of Representatives base its representation on population with each state having at least one representative and for each state to have two senators in other house the Senate regardless of population. This compromise has worked for more than years. But critics claim that the Senate is undemocratic because it gives each state two senators regardless of population.
Divide the class into small groups. Imagine that your group is a commission asked to make recommendations on the Senate. Do the following:. Decide on one of these options: a Leave the Senate as it is, b Abolish the Senate, c Make the Senate based on population, or d Make up your own option. Alumni Volunteers The Boardroom Alumni. Curriculum Materials.
Add Event. Main Menu Home. Representation in Congress The general outline of the Virginia plan was well received. Giving Power to the President After arriving at a compromise on electing the legislature, the convention addressed the other parts of the Virginia Plan.
As Madison noted: Mr. Stopping the Slave Trade A deep disagreement arose over slavery. Why No Bill of Rights? What were the Articles of Confederation? What problems did the Articles have?
What was the Virginia Plan? How did it differ from the Articles of Confederation? Do the following: 1. Update the apportionment every decade according to the official census.
This apportionment shows how out of whack the current Senate has become. Read: The people v. In the new allocation, the total number of senators would be The total is more than because 10 of the smallest states have much less than 0. The Constitution plainly says that each state gets two senators. But, look, when conservative lawyers first argued that the Affordable Care Act violated the Commerce Clause, that seemed unthinkable, too.
Our Constitution is more malleable than many imagine. First, consider that Article V applies only to amendments. The Senate Reform Act would simply shift seats according to population. No state or its citizens would lose the franchise.
Note that even states that did not ratify the voting-rights amendments have, functionally, consented to them, and thus also to the constitutional logic supporting a Senate Reform Act.
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