On the election of Senators

Article 3, Section II of the Constitution says that each State legislature is in charge of choosing its federal Senators. One rationale for this is provided in Federalist #9, which claims that it makes the states "constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate." The 17th Amendment reversed this, however, making Senators subject to a direct popular vote.

Why was the 17th Amendment passed? What might the Founding Fathers say about it? How were the politics of the Senate changed as a result of it?

The Constitution -- A First Cut

The Articles of Confederation.

The map

The Constitution.

The Great Compromise:

• Virginia Plan
• New Jersey Plan
• Connecticut Compromise

Read these provisions from an actual constitution. How would you appraise them?

ARTICLE 118. Citizens have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality. ...

ARTICLE 119. Citizens have the right to rest and leisure. The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to seven hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.

ARTICLE 120. Citizens have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.

ARTICLE 121. Citizens have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges; by instruction in schools being conducted in the native language...

ARTICLE 122. Women are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life. The possibility of exercising these rights is ensured to women by granting them an equal right with men to work, payment for work, rest and leisure, social insurance and education, and by state protection of the interests of mother and child, prematernity and maternity leave with full pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens.

ARTICLE 123. Equality of rights of citizens irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or
nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.

ARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church. ...

ARTICLE 128. The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.

Contrast the US Constitution with the Confederate Constitution.

• Federalist 1
• Federalist 10
• Federalist 51
• Federalist 47
• Federalist 48
  

James Madison and Health Care

Why are the Constitution and Federalist relevant to health care? Explains Charles Lane of The Washington Post:

Everyone has his own explanation for the fact that the U.S. still doesn’t have a national health plan while all the other industrial democracies do. Here’s mine: The constitution.

I don’t mean that Obama’s plan, or any other, actually violates the constitution. Perhaps Congress lacks the authority to impose an individual mandate. Or perhaps not. I mean that the whole effort to create a new national health insurance system all at once flies in the face of this country’s quirky but durable 18th-century political structure. The Obama plan isn’t so much unconstitutional as it is counter-constitutional.

For better or worse, our founding document disfavors comprehensive national legislation of any kind -- let alone bills that seek to reconfigure 17 percent of the economy. This was intentional, of course. The Framers wanted to create a government that would protect the new country from foreign threats and foster trade among its constituent parts, but would not threaten liberty, which they defined as the freedom of individuals, states and localities to govern themselves.

Lane quotes Federalist 51:

While all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.

Click here to read the entire article.