What’s the Harm?
4 Ways Senate Malapportionment Harms America
This is the second section of a larger article, “The Great Bait-and-Switch: U.S. Senate Malapportionment in Historical Perspective”
One way Americans justify the anti-democratic makeup of the Senate is to assert that it does no real harm to American democracy. Common arguments are that it seems to be working well enough, or that residents of large states are simply not making the most of their equal representation in the House. Under our strange feast metaphor, this is a bit like telling guests seated at the larger tables they simply need to apply more mindfulness to the subtle flavors of the food in their lunchboxes, and besides, that’s where the real nutrition is anyway.
Alas, the Senate is not a mere appendage to the House; it is the “hot food” in our metaphor because it enjoys more power than the lower house, in a way that is extremely unusual among federal systems (Taylor et al. 2014, 207). Worse, there are numerous ways that the Senate has used its disproportionate power to do real harm, both to residents of particular states, and to the country as a whole.
This section has four parts. In “For Want of A Majority of States,” we document how the Senate was responsible both for preventing any peaceful resolution of the issue of slavery, and, after slavery was abolished, keeping African-Americans disenfranchised for a period of more than eight decades.
In “A Cascade of Inequality,” we examine how under-representation in the Senate has cascading effects, affecting Americans’ subjective experience of representation, leadership positions in the Senate, and, ultimately, the power of special interests.
In “Piglets at the Trough,” we look at how the Senate uses its power over the budget to assign a disproportionate share of federal funding to small and slow-growing states.
Finally, in “Equal Justice Without Equal Representation?” we look at three different ways that Senate malapportionment constitutes an equal protection violation, albeit one with Constitutional endorsement.
