Under the original design of the US Constitution, the House and Senate were distinct bodies with distinct functions.  The House represented the people as a whole and the Senate was designed to represent the various state Legislatures.  In this way, the people as a whole would be represented and the States would be able to ensure that the federal government would not encroach on the power of the states or grow too powerful compared to the states.  How?  Originally, it was the state legislatures that would elect the senators and send them to Washington.

The Senate will be elected by the state legislatures, and represent the states in their political capacity; and thus each branch [the House and the Senate] will form a proper and independent check on the other, and the legislative power will be advantageously balanced.”

Charles C. Pinckney –  Early American statesman of South Carolina, Revolutionary War veteran, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

 

The Representatives are to be elected by the people at large. They will therefore be the guardians of the rights of the great body of the citizens. So well guarded is this Constitution throughout, that it seems impossible that the rights either of the states or of the people should be destroyed.

Oliver Wolcott – Signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and also the Articles of Confederation as a representative of Connecticut.

 

When did this change?  This changed when the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1913.  Why did it pass?  The Progressive movement.  Progressives across the country were clamoring for the popular election of the senate (no doubt because like the Supreme Court of today, the Senate of their day was blocking the Progressive Agenda).  Out of fear that the desire for that change in the Constitution would lead to an outright constitutional convention where the whole of the constitution could be scrapped, the proposal was made in the congress and was ratified by the states.  The old Senate was no more and the new Popularly Elected Senate was created.  Speaking of the senate…

 … so there are particular moments in public affairs, when the people stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. … What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped, if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions?  Popular liberty might have then escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens, the hemlock the one day, and statues the next.

James Madison, Federalist No.63

 

Are we better off for the change today?  Have the states (state governments ie. legislatures) maintained a form of representation in the Federal Government?  Has the Federal Government kept itself from infringing on the liberties of individuals?

Article 1 of the Constitution is the part of the Constitution that gives Congress its lawmaking authority. It is in the Congress  where laws are debated, voted on and sent to the president for signing into law.  While various federal agencies and the executive branch have usurped to some degree this function, Article 1 gives the guarantee to US Citizens that al their laws will be reviewed, debated and approved by their represntatives before they become subject to them.

Article one states:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 1

While the congress is given the power to write and vote on legislation, they do have their limits.  As we will see later, the congress, like the other branches of government are bound by the chains of the constitution.  The government cannot constitutionaly exercise any power which is not expressly authorized to them in the Constitution.

James Madison Stated, “The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined.”

Federalist Papers N0. 45

Thomas Jefferson believed that laws, under the constitution, should be few in number and be written in plain english.

The path we have to pursue is so quiet that we have nothing scarcely to propose.  A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness.

Thomas Jefferson, Bergh 10:342

 

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should therefore be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense.  Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtlties which make anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure.

Thomas Jefferson, Bergh 15:450

 

Does our congress function this way now?  Do they read the bills they debate and vote on?  Are the bills written in plain english, suitable for the common man to understand with common sense?

Edificational Moment:

The first thing I know is my preamble. It is a part of me.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Dissected, this is an eloquent statement of purpose for the US Constitution.

Formed by the public, not out of coercion, power grabbing, military dictatorship, mass rioting or chaos. Members of the 13 colonies sent delegates to discuss how to strengthen the Articles of Confederation which lacked power to unite the colonies  and to  establish Justice (System of Federal Law promoting national standards on national issues of law), insure domestic Tranquility (National Security), provide for the common defence (Military), promote the general Welfare (promote general prosperity -not foodstamps or public benefits for all as it has come to be believed), and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity (that this Constitution binds all and even future generations).

What other insight can we get into the preamble from noteworthy patriots?

The Introduction, like a preamble to a law, is the Key of the Constitution.  Whenever federal power is exercised, contrary to the spirit breathed by this introduction, it will be unconstitutionally exercised , and ought to be resisted by the people.

 

A NATIVE OF VIRGINIA, OBSERVATIONS UPON THE PROPOSED
PLAN OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 1778. Monroe Writings 1:356

 

 

The preamble can never be resorted to, to enlarge the powers confided to the general government, or any of its departments. It cannot confer any power per se; it can never amount, by implication, to an enlargement of any power expressly given. It can never be a legitimate source of any implied power, when otherwise withdrawn from the Constitution. It’s true office is to expounded the nature, and extent, and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution, and not substantively to create them…

The Constitution, then, was adopted first “to form a more perfect union.” Why this was desirable has been in some measure anticipated in considering the defects of the Confederation. When the Constitution, however, was that for the people for ratification, suggestions were frequently made by those, who were opposed to it, that the country was too extensive for a single national government, and ought to be broken up into several distinct confederacies, or sovereignty; and some even went so far as to doubt whether it were not, on the whole, vast, that each state should retain a separate, independent, and sovereign political existence. Those, who contemplated several confederacies, speculated upon a dismemberment into three great confederacies, one of the northern, another of the middle, and a third of the southern states. The greater probability certainly, that was of the separation into two confederacies; the one composed of the northern and middle states, and the other of the southern. The reasoning of the Federalist on this subject is absolutely irresistible. The progress of the population in the western territory, since that period, as materially changed the basis of all that reasoning. There could scarcely now upon any dismemberment exist, with a view to local interests, political associations, or public safety, less than three confederacies and most probably four. And it is more than probable, that the line of division would be traced out by geographical boundaries, which would separate the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding states. Such a distinction in government is so fraught with causes of irritation and alarm, that no honest patriot could contemplate it without many painful and distressing fears.

 

Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 1:462, 469
Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1845.
Author of the first comprehensive treatise on the US Constitution.