North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida with significant evidence of GOP Voter Fraud and suppression, and then there is Wisconsin
{continued from above}
Of course, all of this activity on the state level was affected by broader movements in American politics. The Populist movement’s deep-seated suspicion of wealth and influence prompted it to portray the Senate as “an unrepresentative, unresponsive ‘millionaires club’, high on partisanship but low in integrity.”5 In the House, proponents of direct election such as William Calvin Oates (Democrat of Alabama) proclaimed a need to “awaken . . . in the Senators . . . a more acute sense of responsibility to the people.”6
When Populism waned, Progressivism waxed in its place, evangelizing belief in “the redemptive powers of direct democracy”,7 that is, the conviction that the solution to all the problems of democracy was more democracy. The people could be trusted to act for themselves; government was to be not only “of, by and for” the people but, as Woodrow Wilson put it, “through the people.”8 Thus, William Jennings Bryan argued on the Senate floor that “if the people of the United States have enough intelligence to choose their representatives in the State legislature . . . they have enough intelligence to choose the men who shall represent them in the United States Senate.” Senator David Turpee agreed: However valid were the reasons for the Framers’ original mode of electing senators, the people at the end of the 19th century were “a new people living and acting under an old system.”
In short, under the Progressives’ tutelage, people came to associate the election of the Senate by state legislatures with an outmoded, plutocratic constitution, and direct election of the Senate with reform, faith in the people and progress. Senators were no longer described, in the grandiloquent terms of Tocqueville, as “eloquent advocates, distinguished generals, wise magistrates, and statesmen of note, whose arguments would do honor to the most remarkable parliamentary debates of Europe.” Rather they were subjected to Beardian obloquy: “Some of them were political leaders of genuine talents but a majority possessed no conspicuous merits except the ownership of strong boxes well filled with securities.”9
Woodrow Wilson was a particularly strong advocate of the direct election of the Senate. He argued that America’s constitutional forms were all associated with a mechanistic “Newtonian Theory” of politics that had been superseded by a modern “Darwinian Theory.” “The Constitution”, Wilson argued in his 1912 campaign book The New Freedom,:
”was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist to move by virtue of the efficacy of ‘checks and balances’. . . . The trouble with th[at] theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.”
Moreover, Progressives regarded constitutional forms as evidence of the Framers’ lack of confidence in the people. As Wilson argued, the Framers were “willing to act for the people, but . . . not willing to act through the people. Now we propose to act for ourselves.” Alexander Hamilton came under particularly heavy fire: Because he relied on constitutional forms and not simply on the people, Wilson branded him a “great man, but, in my judgment, not a great American.”
As the prospect of a constitutional convention over the issue of the Senate’s election loomed, and after ten Republican Senators lost their seats in 1910 for opposing the direct election of the Senate, the new 62nd Congress finally approved the 17th Amendment on May 12, 1912. The vote in the Senate was 64 to 24, 238 to 39 in the House. The Amendment was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the state legislatures in less than eleven months and declared to be a part of the Constitution in a proclamation by the Secretary of State on May 31, 1913.
What is particularly noteworthy about the adoption and ratification of the 17th Amendment is the absence of any serious or systematic consideration of its potential impact on federalism. The popular press, the party platforms, the state memorials, the House and Senate debates, and the state legislative debates during ratification focused almost exclusively on expanding democracy, eliminating political corruption, defeating elitism and freeing the states from what they had come to regard as an onerous responsibility. Almost no one paused to weigh the consequences of the amendment on federalism itself. Almost no one asked what the Framers had in mind in 1789, or sought to understand their design.
Only three exceptions are apparent in the voluminous record. One was Representative Franklin Bartlett, a Democrat from New York, who argued during the 53rd Congress that the interests of the states as states could only be preserved by keeping the senators as representatives of state governments. He fully appreciated that “the Framers of the Constitution, were they present in this House to-day, would inevitably regard this resolution as a most direct blow at the doctrine of State’s rights and at the integrity of the State sovereignties; for if you once deprive a State as a collective organism of all share in the General Government, you annihilate its federative importance.”
The other two exceptions were in the Senate: George F. Hoar, a Republican from Massachusetts, and Elihu Root, a Republican from New York. On the Senate floor during the 53rd Congress, Senator Hoar defended the indirect election of the Senate, declaring that the “state legislatures are the bodies of men most interested of all others to preserve State jurisdiction. . . . It is well that the members of one branch of the Legislature should look to them for their re-election, and it is a great security for the rights of the States.” After quoting approvingly from Story’s Commentaries that election of the Senate by the state legislatures “would increase the public confidence by securing the national government from any encroachments on the powers of the states”, Hoar continued:
”The State legislature will be made up of men whose duty will be the administration of the State authority of their several State interests and the framing of laws for the government of the State which they represent. The popular conventions, gathered for the political purpose of nominating Senators, may be quite otherwise composed and guided. Here, in the State legislature, is to be found the great security against the encroachment upon the rights of the States.”
In the 61st Congress, Senator Root argued against direct election of the Senate on the same grounds—if the sovereignty of the states was to be preserved, the original mode of electing the Senate had to be preserved. Root reasoned, too, that if the 1866 law was at base responsible for the problem of deadlocks, and if deadlocks were the seedbed of corruption, then the sensible thing to do was to fix the 1866 law, not to amend the Constitution.
Alas, no one mentioned or heeded Tocqueville either, who had observed shrewdly that “men living in democratic ages do not readily comprehend the utility of forms”—Tocqueville’s word for constitutional structure. Indeed, he wrote, such men “commonly aspire to none but easy and present gratifications” and, since the “slightest delay exasperates them”, they are “hostile to forms, which perpetually retard or arrest them in some of their projects.” As Tocqueville argued, however, “this objection which the men of democracies make to forms is the very thing which renders forms so useful to freedom. . . . Their chief merit is to serve as a barrier between the strong and the weak”—in the case of federalism, between the national government and the states. Indeed, concluded Tocqueville, “Forms become more necessary in proportion as the government becomes more active and more powerful”, so that “democratic nations naturally stand more in need of forms than other nations, and they naturally respect them less. This deserves most serious attention.”
Tocqueville thus pointed, prophetically as it turned out, to the possibility of irony. The 17th Amendment was ultimately intended to make the Constitution more democratic, but instead, by contributing to the vast growth of the national government and the federal bureaucracy, it has produced on balance a less democratic result. Thus an amendment intended to promote democracy even at the expense of federalism has undermined both.
Federalism was originally protected both structurally and democratically—the Senate, after all, was chosen by popularly-elected state legislatures. American federalism today is protected neither structurally nor democratically; the ratification of the 17th Amendment means that the fate of traditional state prerogatives depends entirely on either congressional sufferance (what the Court calls “legislative grace”) or on whether an occasional Supreme Court majority can be mustered. A majority of the Supreme Court is perfectly willing to protect federalism by invalidating what the popular branches have enacted, but it is unwilling to protect federalism by returning areas of policymaking to the states. (To do that it would have to repudiate its own decisions holding that the 14th Amendment incorporates most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights and makes them applicable to the states.) The result is anti-democratic as well as anti-federalist: As University of Texas law professor Lino A. Graglia points out, the passage of the protection of state autonomy into the hands of the Court is impossible to justify because it means “the loss not only of federalism but also of the rights of representative self-government, the removal of power not only from the states but from the ordinary political process.”10 Judging by how the Framers saw the role of the judiciary, they clearly would be appalled by the present condition of the American federal democracy.
Just below surface of their reverence for American democracy, many Americans sense that something is not quite right about the way that democracy is functioning today. So they ask, what’s the problem? Too many special interest groups? Too much money awash in an unfettered system of political fundraising? Too much bureaucracy? Too much regulation, or too little? Most of us can’t put our finger on the problem, but what unites most people’s discontent is the sense that individuals, unless they have lots of money or connections, have no meaningful access to the political process except, perhaps, once every four years.
One reason for that feeling is that the government that matters most is far away: It’s the Federal government, with its massive and impenetrable administrative apparatus. And yet most of us instinctually believe in subsidiarity, in the common-sense principle that the best solutions to most problems are those nearest their source, those solutions based on local knowledge and endorsement through genuine citizen participation of some kind.
Federalism is subsidiarity in institutional form, and American democracy today is characterized by neither. Few American voters know who their statehouse representatives are and most could care less, for the perfectly sound reason that state government is responsible for little of consequence in most people’s lives. If those statehouse representatives were again responsible for electing U.S. Senators, voters would probably care a great deal more about them. And, clearly, ordinary citizens would have greater access to their U.S. Senators though their state representatives than they do today—far more than they have had since 1913 and far more than most citizens can hope to get through the ward structures of our political parties.
Of course, this is not what the Progressives anticipated when they urged adoption of the direct election of senators. Instead it reflects well what Wilson himself said of stupidity: “If a man does not know enough to know what the consequences are to be to the country, then he cannot govern the country in a way that is for its benefit.” Indeed. So would the repeal of the 17th Amendment fix all that is awry in American politics? Of course not. But it’s by no means a daffy idea to think it might help.
- by: Ralph A. Rossum
(Rossum is Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism and Director of the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College; his most recent book is Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence: Text and Tradition University Press of Kansas, 2006).
Foot Notes:
1There are other structural protections of federalism in the Constitution—the states’ involvement in the election of the president by the Electoral College (Article II, Section 1) and in the amendment process (Article V) are two of them. The mode of electing the Senate was the structural provision on which the framers placed most emphasis, however.
2See Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority (W. W. Norton & Company, 1969), and Vikram David Amar, “Indirect Effects of Direct Election: A Structural Examination of the Seventeenth Amendment”, Vanderbilt Law Review 49 (1996), pp. 1360-89.
3Farrand, Records, 1: 408. The delegates were aware of other “modes” they could have incorporated into the Constitution that would have defended the interests of the states as states. To mention the four most obvious, they could have (1) specified that the Senate delegation from a state vote as a block, (2) made explicit provision for the instruction of senators by state legislatures, (3) allowed the states to recall their senators, and (4) required rotation in office.
4During the entire period prior to the ratification of the 17th Amendment, the Supreme Court invalidated only seven congressional measures: Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857); United States v. Dewitt, 76 U.S. 41 (1870); United States v. Fox, 95 U.S. 670 (1878); the Trademark Cases, 100 U.S. 82 (1879); the Employers’ Liability Cases, 207 U.S. 463 (1908); Keller v. United States, 213 U.S. 138 (1909); and Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559 (1911). An eighth statute considered in Matter of Heff, 197 U.S. 488 (1905), could be added, but the Court explicitly overturned Matter of Heff in United States v. Nice, 241 U.S. 591 (1916).
5David E. Kyvig, Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995 (University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 209.
6“Election of Senators”, House Reports, 50thCongress, 1st Session, No. 1456, 2.
7“Election of Senators”, Senate Reports, 54thCongress, 1st Session, No.
8Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People(Doubleday, 1913), p. 55.
{continued foot notes}
9Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization: Part Two (Macmillan, 1927), p. 559.
10See “United States v. Lopez: Judicial Review under the Commerce Clause”, Texas Law Review 74 (March 1996), p. 726.
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I was obviously mistaken when I stated to Working Class Stiff that Senator Root was from Massachusetts, my apologies.
The Critical Critic wrote:
{continued foot notes}
9Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization: Part Two (Macmillan, 1927), p. 559.
10See “United States v. Lopez: Judicial Review under the Commerce Clause”, Texas Law Review 74 (March 1996), p. 726.
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I was obviously mistaken when I stated to Working Class Stiff that Senator Root was from Massachusetts, my apologies.
“Tocqueville argued, however, “this objection which the men of democracies make to forms is the very thing which renders forms so useful to freedom. . . . Their chief merit is to serve as a barrier between the strong and the weak”—in the case of federalism, between the national government and the states. Indeed, concluded Tocqueville, “Forms become more necessary in proportion as the government becomes more active and more powerful”, so that “democratic nations naturally stand more in need of forms than other nations, and they naturally respect them less. This deserves most serious attention.” ~~~~ Yes, it certainly does, but the schlors of today do not truly weigh the Constitution or amendments with the zeal of our founding fathers. I truly fear it would be yet another political ruling based on politics alone, just as it was done when the progressives held majority in getting the 17th adopted...that scares me....
What is your opinion on this “ New Federalism” idiology now under way~~
New Federalism typically involves the federal government providing block grants to the states to resolve a social issue.. Something i do support...The federal government then monitors outcomes but provides broad discretion to the states for how the programs are implemented. Advocates of this approach sometimes cite a quotation from a dissent by Louis Brandeis in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann:
It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.
From 1937 to 1995, the Supreme Court of the United States did not void a single Act of Congress for exceeding Congress's power under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, instead holding that anything that could conceivably have even a slight impact on commerce was subject to federal regulation. It was thus seen as a (narrow) victory for federalism when the Rehnquist Court reined in federal regulatory power in United States v. Lopez (1995) and United States v. Morrison (2000).
The Supreme Court wavered, however, in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), holding that the federal government could outlaw the use of marijuana for medical purposes under the Commerce Clause even if the marijuana was never bought or sold, and never crossed state lines. How broad a view of state autonomy the Court will take in future decisions remains unclear. (See Gonzales v. Oregon)
Justice O'Connor dissented in Gonzalez,[1] beginning her opinion by citing United States v. Lopez, which she followed with a federalist reference to Justice Louis Brandeis's dissenting opinion in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann.
As we are seeing more and more states have adopted recreational or medicinal use of pot so much so it in effects renders the Federal law on it obsolete.. I know there is a bill before Congress to rewrite the federal law on it now since it conflicts with the state laws... A showing by the states and citizens has made it possible for change, as it should be I might add.... Didn't take an Article V either.. it took a strong showing by the states and citizens. ...