The Invention of the United States Senate

Download or read book The Invention of the United States Senate written by Daniel Wirls and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-04 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invention of the United States Senate was the most complicated and confounding achievement of the Constitutional Convention. Although much has been written on various aspects of Senate history, this is the first book to examine and link the three central components of the Senate's creation: the theoretical models and institutional precedents leading up to the Constitutional Convention; the work of the Constitutional Convention on both the composition and powers of the Senate; and the initial institutionalization of the Senate from ratification through the early years of Congress. The authors show how theoretical principles of a properly constructed Senate interacted with political interests and power politics in the multidimensional struggle to construct the Senate, before, during, and after the convention.