2302+Fall+Week+Five

Week Five Readings, Notes, and Assignment**
 * GOVT 2302


 * The Legislature: Background**

Readings

- British History: [|The Glorious Revolution] - Grievances related to legislative independence in the [|Declaration of Independence.](To be posted below) - Outline of issues related to the design of the legislature presented in [|the Federalist Papers], papers 52 - 66. (To be posted below)

Notes on the above will be posted soon.

Assignments

write 200 words on each of the following topics: 1 - How did the Glorious Revolution allow the British Parliament to assert rights over the British Monarchy? 2 - Many of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence involved efforts by the King of England to usurp and control colonial legislative power. Outline these grievances and speculate about what these grievances suggest about the role the legislature is to play in governance 3 - Select one of the Federalist Papers listed above and outline what in fact it tells us about the nature of legislative power as designed in the Constitution.

From the Declaration of Independence, the grievances related to legislative power:
 * He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
 * He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
 * He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
 * He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
 * He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
 * He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.
 * He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
 * He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
 * He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
 * For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
 * For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;
 * For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
 * For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

From the Federalist Papers, and overview of subjects related to the design of the Legislative Branch:

[|52] - The qualifications of the electors of the house and those that are eligible to be elected to the house. Suffrage is determined by the states. The two year term is justified. "It is essential to liberty that government in general should have a common interest with the people." Discusses the frequency of elections and the design of the House of Commons.

[|53] - More about the House. The frequency of elections matters: “Where annual elections end, tyranny begins.” But the longer one is in offoce, the more experience one acquires.

[|54] - Concerns the Apportionment of members of the House to the various states, justifies the 3/5ths compromise. [|55] - Discusses the number of people that there should be in the House of Representatives. Suspicions exist that the 65 people that will be in the House of Representatives are too few, and corruption might result. They cannot be trusted with the public interest. Publius points out that the previsou COngresses were not corrupt, so why should this one be?

Choice quote: "In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."

[|56] - It is alleged that the House will be too small to possess a due knowledge of the interests of its constituents.

[|57] - It is also alleged that the House will be composed of people "taken from that class of citizens which will have the least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few."

Choice quote: " The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." [|58] - A final accusation is that the House will not be increased as the population expands.

[|59] - The regulation of elections by Congress: the problem of state control.

[|60] - The regulation of elections by Congress: the problem of national control. [|61] - All elections should happen in the counties where the electors reside.

[|62] - A preliminary analysis of the Senate

[|63] - The Senate provides more stability than the House: "A FIFTH desideratum, illustrating the utility of a senate, is the want of a due sense of national character. Without a select and stable member of the government, the esteem of foreign powers will not only be forfeited by an unenlightened and variable policy, proceeding from the causes already mentioned, but the national councils will not possess that sensibility to the opinion of the world, which is perhaps not less necessary in order to merit, than it is to obtain, its respect and confidence. [|64] - IT IS a just and not a new observation, that enemies to particular persons, and opponents to particular measures, seldom confine their censures to such things only in either as are worthy of blame. Unless on this principle, it is difficult to explain the motives of their conduct, who condemn the proposed Constitution in the aggregate, and treat with severity some of the most unexceptionable articles in it.

[|65] - THE remaining powers which the plan of the convention allots to the Senate, in a distinct capacity, are comprised in their participation with the executive in the appointment to offices, and in their judicial character as a court for the trial of impeachments. As in the business of appointments the executive will be the principal agent, the provisions relating to it will most properly be discussed in the examination of that department. We will, therefore, conclude this head with a view of the judicial character of the Senate.

[|66] - A REVIEW of the principal objections that have appeared against the proposed court for the trial of impeachments, will not improbably eradicate the remains of any unfavorable impressions which may still exist in regard to this matter.