The Voice of the States
The Senate is as important now as it was in 1787, for all the same reasons.
I am not one for the wild trends that inflict our news cycle today. I never have been. Usually, the topic being discussed isn’t actually being discussed, and I would rather talk about things that are interesting. I also prefer to talk about issues that will be important in the long-term, which simply isn’t how our news cycle works; if its not a problem today (or yesterday), they simply don’t find it worth discussing. I prefer to look forward to issues that either need to be fixed long-term or problems that may come up in the future, because it is those problems that it will be my generation’s to wrestle with.
One such issue is that of the Senate’s existence. We all have seen the occasional call for its abolishment, coming largely from young progressives on the left. I can tell you (anecdotally, of course) that, as someone who interacts with young progressives on a consistent basis, that idea isn’t going away. If I had to predict now, I would say that these declarations of abolishment are only going to get louder into the future. That is the nature of time, after all; today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders, and it will be their preferences that define the politics of our future. For those of us who believe in the Senate as designed, then, it is important to understand why it exists today so we are prepared to defend it tomorrow.
This defense begins, as most of mine do, with a look at the root philosophy behind our system, and the Senate. In a democratic system, the power of all government derives from the people, through mechanisms designed by them. In a federal system, this power is split between a number of levels. In the case of the United States, that means government power is split between three levels; the municipal, the state, and the national, each with their distinct roles.
It also follows, historically and logically speaking, that this delegation of power from the people to their government must, in a federal system, follow a line of delegation. In some cases, it is purely from the bottom up; in others, it is the top down. In the case of the United States, under the US Constitution, our power is delegated first to the state governments and then out in both directions to the municipalities and to the federal government. You don’t have to take it from me; the ratification of the Constitution (and therefore the delegation of the power to the national government) was done via state-level votes, and the Constitution protects the states’ right to organize themselves internally. The only place in which the federal government ‘delegates’ power from the top on down is in the drawing of state lines, and even that has not always been the case; California, for example, drew its own borders when it was a territory. Otherwise, the first place that all the powers we grant to government are delegated to is the state.
These points may seem abstract and arbitrary, but they have real-world implications. The way we as US citizens delegate our powers to the federal government goes directly through the states. We do not delegate those powers as US citizens; we delegate them as members of our individual states, and as such we deserve—through our states—a voice in how those powers are used. You are both a citizen of the US and a citizen of whatever state you live in, even if you refuse to acknowledge the latter, and deserve to be represented in both cases.
Enter the Senate. You often hear from those who disagree with the way that the Senate is set up that it violates the “one person, one vote” principle because the votes in the Senate are ‘weighted’ in favor of citizens from smaller states. This would be true, if the Senate was set up to represent the nation as a whole like the House is. It’s not, though; the Senate exists to represent the states, and you as a state citizen. Those votes should be equal, because no state is better or worse than another in the eyes of the federal government. The collective vote of all South Dakotans is not and should not be worth less than the collective vote of all Californians simply because there are more of them. Those votes must be weighed equally, as they are in the Senate.
Once again, you don’t need to take it from me. In Federalist 62, James Madison writes, “In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each state, is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual states, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty.” The Founders understood that federal powers derived from the states and that as such they deserved a voice. They believed everything I am repeating to you today. Their words are as true today as they were in 1787. We would be wise to heed their wisdom.
You’ll note Madison uses the phrase “residuary sovereignty.” I’m pretty sure Madison did not intend for - as you suggest - the states to be the primary governmental authority with power then delegated from them to the federal government.
You ignore the supremacy clause for one thing. More importantly, the Constitution did not establish a confederation of states but a single nation. You’ll recall that it was a remedy for the failure of the Articles of Confederation.
I would argue that in fact what the Constitution originally established was something closer to a power-sharing between states and federal government. Certain powers reside in each. But you are correct that the states are given wider latitude originally whereas the Constitution circumscribed federal power. Local governments obviously are secondary to the state government, but the federal government is not.
One key is shown in the distinction between House and Senate. Madison set up a “mixed system” if you will: it merged elements of liberalism with republicanism. The Senate is the chamber which functioned exactly as you suggested: it was to represent the interests of the state governments, which delegated power to it by choosing the Senators. The House, though, was always popularly elected. Indicating that it was meant to be the direct link between the people and the federal government.
What you end up with is a system that balances power and sovereignty rather than concentrating it. The House derives its power directly from the people. The Senate from the states. I’d prefer a return to that system (by eliminating the direct election of Senators). But we are not citizens of our state first. We are citizens of America first and our state second (there is freedom of movement between the states).