Bicameral Legislature No Longer Exists

[Keith Broaders]

Bicameral Legislature

In the our first Costitution of the united States under he Articles of Comfederation the legislative branch of the government consisted of a senate where each of the states were equally represented. 

When the Constitutional Convention was held the most hotly contested debate was between the delegates of the large and small states.

Virginia, Massachusetts and Pensylvania had much larger populations and beleived that they should be entitled to more Congressional representationn.

When the Virgina Plan to provide that states be unequally represented was proposed the delegates of the small states strenously objected while demanding that all states regardless of their size be equally represented.

The stalemate was broken when Connrctecticut's delegate Roger Sherman proposed the establishment of a bicameral legislatire with a Senate to represent the states equally and a House of Representatives to represet the people.

This bicameral model provided for the state legislatures to choose their senators in indireect elections while members of the House of Representatives would be chose in direct democratic elections.

This model created a check and a balance that prevented the people living in the large states from being able to completely dominate the people living in the small states, 

In order to guarantee that the small states would have he power to block the potential tyranny of the majority, an amendment protrction clause was added to the Constitution that guaranteed that the states would never lose their suffrage in the senate without their consent.

When the 17th Amendment was fraudulently ratified and the states lost their suffrage in the senate and our bicameral legislatire became a unicameral legislatue with two legislative bodies representing just one constituncy, while robbing the state legislatures of their voice,

With the ratification of the 17th Amendmentthe Senate became a second version of the House of Represntatives and our Constitutional Republic became a Democracy