Should the 17th Amendment be repealed?
Lando 
Posted on 01/30/2006 6:23:10 AM PST by FerdieMurphy
Citizenship was NEVER derived from a state it was ALWAYS granted by the fedgov as the constitution states.
And without the protection of gerrymandered districts. The irony is that the House is now protected and the Senate turns over.
-PJ
I believe the Founders meant the Senate to be the more deliberative body of the legislature, hence the six-year term and the insulation from direct popular vote. Nowadays, it's as you described: the Major Leagues to the House of Representatives' AAA-ball.
I think repeal is a pretty good idea, but I think a more severe flaw was built in at the nation's beginning. Look at the "factions" described in Federalist 10 whose effects are supposed to be ameliorated by the separation of powers. Political parties themselves are factions!
Such factional interest keeps the 17th in its place. It's the interests of the national or state parties at stake, not the interest of the state itself.
Show me.
Didn't the Founders also believe the sheer size of the nation and the diversity of its population would cancel out any factional interference as well?
Should the 17th Amendment be repealed?
Lando
Sadly it will probably never be repealed. It's much easier for Senators to influence the public every six years than it would be for the to influence the legislature. They'll never vote to change it.
Article I Section 2 (eligibility of becoming a Representative) No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Article I, Section 8, paragraph 4 (Congress shall have the power...) To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,...
Amendment XIV makes ex-slaves citizens of the United States and of the states wherein they reside.
Right. Unless we start riding our state legislators and even those lifer senators to repeal!
I've been saying for years that the 17th Amendment was the worst thing to happen to this country.
Try telling somebody that the Senate no longer exists. They may give you blank stares, but tell them that we really have two houses and NO senate. I've converted a few to my line of thinking that way.
Amen.
Republicanism is political representation through REPRESENTATIVES. Democracy is direct power to the citizens.
Think of it on a spectrum, with the Articles of Confederation on the right, with NOBODY directly elected, to a referendum-type process on the left.
Republicanism vs. democracy is a matter of degrees.
Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, both Republicans, also supported the 16th and 17th Amendments.
Some say it was never properly ratified.
It couldn't be ratified actually because it concerned the senate which voted to ratify. The proper way would've been the second way: for an amendment by 3/4 of the states.
Things changed from 1787 to 1913: 1) People convinced themselves that government had to be more democratic, with greater power for electoral majorities and fewer checks on their choices, 2) states ceased to be as economically significant as they had been, and 3) corporations came to be much more important. So the senator from West Virginia or Montana or Rhode Island would be seen as representing the coal mining or copper or textiles or oil, and not some specific set of WV, MT, or RI values.
Under the circumstances either 1) senators were going to be popularly elected in order to preserve the power of the upper house or 2) senators would remain chosen by the state legislatures and the Senate would lose authority and become more like other upper houses (the Australian or Canadian Senate, the British House of Lords, or the German Bundesrat).
I notice on the Internet, though, that one advocate of returning to the old way of doing things suggested letting the Republican and Democratic caucuses in state legislatures choose their party's senatorial candidates. It's an interesting measure that doesn't require anything more than a change of state laws. It could be a good indication of what a return to indirect election might yield.
As it is, though, I'd rather be governed by the first thousand names in the phone book, than by my state legislators, who tend not to be more honest or more reliable or even more intelligent than the average citizen.
All that particular part of the Constitution does is to give the criteria for someone to run for the office of Representative.
And it's 'who SHALL be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen'...not 'who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant...'
A representative of the United States must be of the age of twenty-five years; must have been seven years a citizen of the United States; must, at the time of his election, be an inhabitant of the State he is to represent; and, during the time of his service, must be in no office under the United States. Under these reasonable limitations, the door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith.
There is nothing there to prove your assertion that:
" Citizenship was NEVER derived from a state it was ALWAYS granted by the fedgov"
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Article I, Section 8, paragraph 4 (Congress shall have the power...) To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,...
A uniform rule of naturalization was needed in the Constitution because the States has such disparate rules concerning naturalization under the Articles of Confederation:
The dissimilarity in the rules of naturalization, has long been remarked as a fault in our system, and as laying a foundation for intricate and delicate questions.
In the 4th article of the confederation, it is declared "that the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens, in the several States, and the people of each State, shall in every other, enjoy all the privileges of trade and commerce, &c." There is a confusion of language here, which is remarkable. Why the terms free inhabitants, are used in one part of the article; free citizens in another, and people in another, or what was meant by superadding "to all privileges and immunities of free citizens,"--"all the privileges of trade and commerce," cannot easily be determined. It seems to be a construction scarcely avoidable, however, that those who come under the denomination of free inhabitants of a State, although not citizens of such State, are entitled in every other State to all the privileges of free citizens of the latter; that is, to greater privileges than they may be entitled to in their own State; so that it may be in the power of a particular State, or rather every State is laid under a necessity, not only to confer the rights of citizenship in other States upon any whom it may admit to such rights within itself; but upon any whom it may allow to become inhabitants within its jurisdiction.
Since the Articles PRECEED the Constitution, the concept of 'State citizen' was established well before the existence of a 'federal citizen'.
The Constitution only refined and expanded on the Articles of the Confederation, it didn't suddenly obliterate the well established legal concepts of an Inhabitant (natural person) citizen (artificial, or 'legal' person),
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Amendment XIV makes ex-slaves citizens of the United States and of the states wherein they reside.
No. As I stated in my first post (along with several Supreme Court decisions to substantiate my assertion) the fourteenth Amendment 'freed' no one.....
It enslaved us all.
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