The Senate: From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock

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In this lively analysis, Daniel Wirls examines the Senate in relation to our other institutions of government and the constitutional system as a whole, exposing the role of the "world’s greatest deliberative body" in undermining effective government and maintaining white supremacy in America. As Wirls argues, from the founding era onward, the Senate constructed for itself an exceptional role in the American system of government that has no firm basis in the Constitution. This self-proclaimed exceptional status is part and parcel of the Senate’s problematic role in the governmental process over the past two centuries, a role shaped primarily by the combination of equal representation among states and the filibuster, which set up the Senate’s clash with modern democracy and effective government and has contributed to the contemporary underrepresentation of minority members. As he explains, the Senate’s architecture, self-conception, and resulting behavior distort rather than complement democratic governance and explain the current gridlock in Washington, D.C. If constitutional changes to our institutions are necessary for better governance, then how should the Senate be altered to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? This book provides one answer. Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Senate and American Democracy 1. Creating Something Exceptional?: Power and Purpose in the Design of the Senate 2. Equal Representation: The Perpetual Great Compromise 3. Equal Representation’s Inexorable Clash with Political and Racial Equality 4. The Right of the Living Dead: Staggered Terms, Continuing Bodies, and Constitutional Myths Senators Tell Themselves and America 5. The Filibuster: From Southern Citadel to the Sixty-Vote Senate 6. “Cooling the Coffee”: More Myths Senators Tell Themselves, and the Filibuster’s Clash with Effective Government and the Constitution 7. The Supermajority Senate Curtailed: Nuclear Options and Mushroom Clouds of Hypocrisy Conclusion: Constitutional Repair and Reparations Notes Index Recent books in the series