I think it's true that a Supreme Court made up of justices to whose appointment a Senate that truly represented states had consented would never have made the anti-state decisions that were made by the Warren Court in particular. I also think that the 17th Amendment seriously weakened the whole system of checks and balances: we now have two Houses of Congress whose members are elected directly, a president who is also elected, although with some elements of indirect election, and a federal judiciary staffed with judges appointed by elected presidents and consented to by elected senators. Everybody's appointment is linked too closely to popular election, and so the different branches of the federal government, instead of checking one another, now much more often operate in concert: Congress, in particular, prefers to evade responsibility by giving the power to reach unpopular decisions to the courts and the agencies, and the courts and agencies happily cooperate.
Since there is really no hope of reversing the 17th Amendment -- democracy is too much a part of the Zeitgeist -- I would restore checks by going even further in the direction of direct democracy. I would appoint the members of the lower houses of legislatures, including the U.S. House of Representatives, by lot instead of by election, thereby giving a veto power over federal legislation to a body made up of average citizens, rather than elected politicians.
reversing 17th amendment is a mission of freerepublic right here,,,,,,
We call for the repeal of the 17th amendment, which will reverse the independence of the Senate and reestablish the Senate as a representative of the State governments, as intended by the Founding Fathers. This arrangement was intended to be a critical check against illegal federal expansion over the States, and the people residing in the various States, and will act to return the powers not granted to the federal government, as enumerated in the Constitution, to the states.
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