These characteristics of the Senate make it even more consultative, aristocratic, and oligarchic than one would expect from reading only the text of the United States Constitution. It is all these characteristics of the Senate taken together that make it the linchpin of the American constitutional system. The U.S. Senate is the linchpin of the U.S. constitutional system and the most powerful upper house of any bicameral legislature in any country in the world. The Constitution gives the U.S. Senate legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Article I, Section 7 makes the Senate completely equal to the House of Representatives when it comes to making laws, which is the nature of legislative power. No bill can become law without Senate approval, and the president`s veto on laws can only be overturned with the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.
A number of presidential and vice-presidential electors equal to the total number of senators and congressional representatives to which the district would be entitled if it were a state, but in no case more than the least populous state; they are in addition to those appointed by States, but are considered electors nominated by a State for the election of the President and Vice-President; and they shall meet in the district and exercise the functions provided for in the twelfth amendment article. In 1937, the Supreme Court began to move away from its laissez-faire stance regarding congressional legislation and the trade clause when it ruled in the National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Company that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (commonly referred to as the Wagner Act) was constitutional. The laws under investigation prevented employers from engaging in “unfair labour practices” such as firing workers for joining unions. By upholding this law, the court signaled its return to John Marshall`s philosophy that Congress could pass laws regulating actions that even indirectly affect interstate commerce. This new attitude was firmly established in 1942. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court held that production quotas under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 were constitutionally applied to agricultural production (in this case, locally grown wheat for private consumption) consumed purely domestically, because its effects on interstate commerce placed it within the jurisdiction of Congress to regulate under the trade clause. This decision marked the beginning of the Court`s full review of congressional claims to the authority of the commercial clause, which lasted until the 1990s. Section 1. The terms of office of the President and Vice-President shall expire at noon on 20 January and the terms of office of Senators and Deputies shall expire at noon on 3 January in the years in which such terms would have ended had this Article not been ratified; and the term of office of their successors then begins. After returning from France in 1789, Thomas Jefferson reportedly asked George Washington one morning at breakfast why Washington had approved the creation of the United States Senate in the Constitution.
Noticing the saucer on which Jefferson`s hot coffee or tea stood, Washington declared, “We pour our legislation into the saucer of the Senate to cool it.” No one knows if this story is really true, but it captures well what the drafters hoped to achieve with the creation of the United States Senate. Section 1. The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is repealed. However, the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 changed the Senate. By subjecting senators to popular elections in their respective states, he effectively democratized the Senate, abandoning one of the crucial differences between the House and the Senate – namely, senators` dependence and direct loyalty to their states. This transformation has weakened one of the strongest ties between senators and their states as sovereign entities; It was easier for senators to pay less attention to local or state leaders` concerns about federalism and more likely to follow the will of the people, even if it meant sacrificing state sovereignty. It is no coincidence, according to many experts, that it was after the ratification of this transformative constitutional amendment that the Senate joined the House in expanding the size and scope of the federal government to an unprecedented degree, all at the expense of state sovereignty.