The Unamendable Senate

Why the Senate Cannot (and Should not) be Abolished

Abolish the Senate and watch democracy sweep the nation.

Such is the promise of today’s leftists. Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America released an updated platform calling for the abolition of the United States Senate. To replace it, they propose a single federal legislative chamber elected through proportional representation. Ashik Siddique, the DSA’s national chair, has argued that the Senate’s equal representation rule is “very undemocratic at a basic level,” and informed the voting public that DSA members “just don’t see the point of the Senate.” Ironically, protecting America from radical ideologues like Siddique is the entire point of the Senate, and the reason that Article V currently has only one exception to the amendment process: “that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

If abolishing the Senate were a fringe view held by few voters, it would hold no relevance in today’s national discussion. Alas, many Democrats (small and large D) defend the position. Writing in The Atlantic last week, Jonathan Chait, a liberal writer who made the case for Trump in 2016, agreed with the DSA. “The Senate is a vestigial deformity upon the Constitution whose elimination,” he wrote, “would rank among the great democratic advances in American history.” The Senate, he notes, arose out of the Great Compromise, a deal struck between large and small states at the Constitutional Convention. “It was great not because it was perfect,” he concludes, “but because it was politically necessary.” That view reduces the logic and history behind the Senate to elementary school civics that, while befitting the rag Chait writes for, fail to raise a convincing argument.

Americans are taught that the Great Compromise was simply a deal that placated both interests: the larger states wanted representation based on population, while the smaller states wanted equal representation; the House reflects the interests of the large states, and the Senate reflects the interests of the small states. What this simple summary fails to capture is that both houses serving structurally distinct purposes is a means toward a deeper end. Washington wrote that the Constitution was born “not of theory, but of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.” In other words, we must acknowledge the fact that, without the Great Compromise, and without the sovereignty of smaller states being recognized more directly, the Convention would have failed.

Democratic socialists should feel strong opposition to an inherently undemocratic institution like the Senate. If they bothered to study the institution they yearn to abolish, perhaps they would discover that “the point of the Senate” derives from “the point of” America — republican, not democratic, government. Madison writes in The Federalist that “[t]he act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a National, but a Federal act…it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States.” The Senate provides a constant reminder and expression of this character while granting individual states greater opportunity to represent their local interests through a protection from federal overreach. The DSA would claim to understand this and defend their proposal as changing the system, but that defense only reveals their ignorance of the Constitution.

After establishing the Senate in Article I, the Framers also went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the federal principle of our Union could not be altered by future majorities, either of the states or the people. While most provisions in Article V could be amended through the ordinary constitutional process, the Senate is treated differently. The respective Article states plainly that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” Every state is obligated to receive an equal number of senators, and no amendment can alter that. This provides a level of insulation for an institution that is not granted to the same extent for any other creation under the Constitution.

That insulation creates a stumbling block for the anti-Senate socialists. Publius writes in Federalist 62 that good government requires fidelity to the people’s happiness and “a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.” A single large chamber with frequent elections and high turnover tends toward the “mutability” of the laws, passing and repealing statutes too quickly for citizens to plan their affairs. While this may seem like a welcome change from the slow-moving Congress of today, it was why the Founders feared an “excess of legislation” and is the point of the Senate that the DSA misses.

Frequent direct elections also increase representatives’ responsiveness to the public’s immediate passions. The Senate’s longer staggered six-year terms provide stability. They create a deliberative and mature check on the House’s haste. As Publius observes, “a body which is to correct this infirmity ought itself to be free from it.” The Senate can therefore catch “temporary errors and delusions” of a passing majority before they become permanent law.

Even today, a national republic as extensive and diverse as ours needs a chamber designed for deliberate reflection. Passionate and potentially radical short-term majorities form a recurring feature of representative government. Abolishing the Senate would lead us down the path that every direct democracy has followed: “spectacles of turbulence and contention … as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths,” in the words of Madison. Article V prevents the abolition of the Senate, and anyone still clinging to our Constitution’s protections against today’s rise of socialism owes the Founders a debt of gratitude for it.

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Andrew Schofield, a native of Long Island, New York, will be entering Hillsdale College this fall with interests in politics, theology, constitutional law, and American political thought. He writes on those topics at First Principles & Last Things. He is also a correspondent for Campus Reform and contributes to the Patriot Perspective, a show affiliated with the Gateway Pundit.