In The Senate Of The United States February 10 1873 Ordered To Be Printed Mr Morton From The Committee On Privileges And Elections Submitted The Following Report On The 7th Of January 1873 The Senate Adopted The Following Resolution Resolved That The Committee On Privileges And Elections Is Directed To Inquire And Report To The Senate Whether The Recent Election Of Electors For President And Vice President Has Been Conducted In The States Of Louisiana And Arkansas In Accordance With The Constitution And Laws Of The United States

Author : Ralph A. Rossum
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 9780739102862
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (28 download)

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Download or read book Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment written by Ralph A. Rossum and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abraham Lincoln worried that the "walls" of the constitution would ultimately be leveled by the "silent artillery of time." His fears materialized with the 1913 ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which, by eliminating federalism's structural protection, altered the very nature and meaning of federalism. Ralph A. Rossum's provocative new book considers the forces unleashed by an amendment to install the direct election of U.S. Senators. Far from expecting federalism to be protected by an activist court, the Framers, Rossum argues, expected the constitutional structure, particularly the election of the Senate by state legislatures, to sustain it. In Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment Rossum challenges the fundamental jurisprudential assumptions about federalism. He also provides a powerful indictment of the controversial federalist decisions recently handed down by an activist U.S. Supreme Court seeking to fill the gap created by the Seventeenth Amendment's ratification and protect the original federal design. Rossum's masterful handling of the development of federalism restores the true significance to an amendment previously consigned to the footnotes of history. It demonstrates how the original federal design has been amended out of existence; the interests of states as states abandoned and federalism left unprotected, both structurally and democratically. It highlights the ultimate irony of constitutional democracy: that an amendment intended to promote democracy, even at the expense of federalism, has been undermined by an activist court intent on protecting federalism, at the expense of democracy.