Democrats don’t like the Senate. Sure, they currently hold more seats in the chamber than their GOP rivals. But there is deep dissatisfaction with the Senate’s structure. With senate seats apportioned equally by state, significant disparities can open up among the number of senators in a party and the percentage of the American people they represent. After all, there are a lot more people represented by Texas’s two senators than by the two from Wyoming. Small-state voters get a much greater share of power in that chamber of Congress than the voters in large states.
Last summer, the Brookings Institute noted that the Senate’s “small state bias” had favored the Republican Party for the last 16 years at least. Before last fall’s midterms, when the Senate was 50-50, the Democratic senators represented over 56 percent of the country; the same number of GOP senators represented less than 44 percent. (READ MORE: Sotomayor’s Wealth Has Exploded Since Joining the Supreme Court)
July 16 marks the anniversary of the decision to make the Senate this way. On that date in 1787, the Constitutional Convention agreed to the Connecticut Compromise. Concerning the two proposed chambers of the legislative branch, one’s offices would be distributed across the country proportionally according to population; the other would have the same number of representatives for every state.
The Constitutional Convention had been going on since the end of May. One of the most important divides among the delegations pitted the large against the small states. Under the old Articles of Confederation, the states each had one vote, regardless of the population or size of the states’ representative delegation. Since the Convention’s opening, the large states had pushed to change this, voting that every legislative chamber have representation proportional to each state’s population. The small states had pushed to keep something akin to the old Articles.
At stake in the debate was a question of power and right. Regarding power, both sides understood the importance of how the legislative branch would be composed. In a system built on the rule of law, who had the most control in making those laws would hold the greatest power under the new constitution.
However, the argument over how to structure legislative representation also involved a debate about what was right. In essence, it was a disagreement on what kind of equality Congress should mirror. Small-state delegates argued that equality between the states should be primary. In a June 27 speech, Luther Martin of Maryland declared “that an equal vote in each State was essential to the federal idea, and was founded in justice and freedom, not merely in policy.” Without that equal system, the citizens of the large states would have the capacity to overwhelm and thus tyrannize the citizens of the small states. It would be a tyranny of the majority.
The proponents of the large states countered by saying the more fundamental equality was not between states but between citizens. Alexander Hamilton mocked the idea that state equality should take precedence over that of human beings. He explained that “as States are a collection of individual men which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition. Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter.” Without equality between voters, the minority could exert its own tyranny over and against the will of the majority. It would be an aristocracy where the privilege came from being in a smaller state.
Progressives critiquing equality of votes in the Senate make something like the big-state argument from the Convention. In those claims, they do have heavyweights like Hamilton and other Founders, such as James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, on their side. Both the Progressives and those Founders also have a legitimate point. As Hamilton said, the people are neither created by the states nor in existence to serve the state’s good. Instead, it is the states that are artificial entities created for the people’s benefit. Moreover, our Declaration of Independence does not say that all states are created equal. Instead, it famously states the equality of all men.
But the current Left, and even these Founders, do not appreciate how the Senate’s composition does serve the people’s good. For one, the Senate’s structure protects federalism by making that chamber more attentive to and protective of state governmental power. Robust state governments help protect the people’s liberty by keeping us away from a “one size fits all” approach to governing that ignores the particular challenges and advantages for the people of specific states. The Senate thus helps keep the government more effective at protecting people’s rights and providing for their common needs.
Moreover, the Senate’s equality of representation can guard against tyranny. Yes, equality of states alone would carry a high risk that the minority of citizens could dictate to the majority and thereby create an aristocracy. But joined with the population-based House, the Senate refines its sister chamber and is refined by that chamber. The House’s tendency toward majority tyranny the Senate can check. The Senate’s temptation toward minority tyranny the House can thwart.
Together, the Senate, as part of Congress, makes for better government. Joined with the House, our legislative branch is better equipped to affirm effective government and restrain despotic endeavors. On the anniversary of the Connecticut Compromise, today’s Progressives today should consider these truths. Rather than critiquing the decision made on July 16, 1787, they should celebrate the good it has done for Americans ever since.
Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.
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