Senate
Tench Coxe on the Senate: A Counter to Anti-Federalist Aristocracy Fears
The structure of the Senate was a serious point of contention for many Anti-Federalists, who warned it would quickly become a permanent or baneful aristocracy, with most senators serving for life. Tench Coxe was a leading voice on the Federalist side rejecting these...
The Senate: More Warnings Ignored?
A permanent aristocracy of sorts – despite federalist assurances to the contrary – with senators mostly serving for life – that’s what many anti-federalists warned we’d get with the structure of the federal Senate. Mercy Otis Warren, for...
Federal Farmer: Senate Will be “Source of the Greatest Evils”
While the anti-federalist Federal Farmer was critical of the proposed House of Representatives for having too few members, he was even more harsh toward the proposed Senate. Ironically, he wrote in his tenth letter dated January 12, 1788, that the Senate “as an...
The Tie-Breaking Vice-President (Revisited)
Back in 2020, when Republicans had a narrow majority in the Senate, there was talk about whether the Vice President could break a tie on a Supreme Court nomination if the Senators were equally divided. Now that the issue is more immediate with a 50-50 Senate,...