Daniel Pollitt spent many years teaching prospective lawyers flowing through the UNC-Chapel Hill law school. He’s likely influenced many of the state’s legal authorities. That’s why it’s disturbing that his weekend opinion piece in the News & Observer displays either an ignorance of or (more likely) disrespect for the genius of the federal system of government the Founders crafted in 1789.
In making a case that voters should fill U.S. Senate vacancies, Pollitt treats us to the following two sentences:
Originally, two Senators from each state were chosen, not by the people but by the state legislature.
This sorry state of things continued until 1913 when the 17th Amendment provided that the senators be elected “by the people.” (Emphasis added.)
What was sorry was the 17th Amendment’s contribution to the abandonment of a federal government. Before the Progressive era, state legislatures chose senators so that states ? which had agreed to surrender more power to the Constitution’s new national government ? would continue to exercise some influence over that new government.
That arrangement, a House of Representatives elected by the people and a Senate elected by the state governments, was designed to help safeguard the states and the people against an overly powerful national government.
It’s too bad Professor Pollitt considers this valuable safeguard to have been a “sorry state of things.” His attitude helps illustrate an argument Jonah Goldberg made in National Review last year, as highlighted in this Locker Room entry.
For a sense of how a dose of federalism might help us today, see this George Leef entry.
