Talk:Connecticut Compromise

Introduction

yes there is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.223.103.59 (talk) 08:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Every state is permitted to have two Senators. How may this standard be viewed by U.S. Senators. Some may argue that it is fair because there also exists the House of Representatives. Therefore, every states' voice must be heard because on may have a good point for discussion that is worth changing votes over.

United States House of Representative undoubtedly. 68.39.174.150 04:22, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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Amongst the many principles that remain important to our founding fathers, and remain cherished today, some include freedom of worship, freedom of speech and as mentioned before the principle of equality of persons, all in opposition to the principle of outright majority rule in order to follow the pattern of reducing informality and bias ("Talk:Connecticut Compromise," 2019).

So I would turn the question around this way: Is there no room in our constitution for any principle other than that of "one man, one vote"? Before crying "no!", remember that a number of other principles important to our founders are still cherished today, such as freedom of worship, freedom of speech, and on and on - all in opposition to the principle of outright majority rule. The purpose of such limitations is to protect each of us in those instances when we are not in the favored majority so that our rights may be protected. Our constitution combines a number of vital principles that sometimes are at odds with each other, but all of which contribute to the protection of individual liberty. Equality of persons and equality of states, counterbalanced against one another, produce an effective constraint on legislation.

But why state equality as a constitutional principle? Our federal government was created not in a vacuum but by and with the consent of states that still exist today, not as mere appendages of the federal government but as separate sovereigns of equal standing, the federal government possessing limited delegated powers and the states retaining the rest. To recognize states' equal standing and preserve their residual sovereignty, the principle of state equality must find support in the constitution's distribution of powers, as reflected by the equal membership in the Senate and in other ways.

Measured against the principle of state equality, that every state gets two Senators is not unfair.

I hate to disagree with anything so reasonable and well written, but . . .

I appreciate the chance at discussion. Thanks!

I fully support the notion of limiting majority rule when it comes to protecting minority rights, as in worship, lifestyle, free expression. Yet, how is it necessary to have an equal suffrage Senate to ensure those rights?

I prefer to view the constitution as a toolbox for protecting individual liberty with state equality being one tool only. But ultimately, none of the tools will work against a sustained, widespread majority consensus to the contrary. The tools work at the margins, putting the brakes on the population’s will temporarily. I did not mean to say that state equality is the best tool, but I do think that it successfully serves as a brake on popular action and is therefore useful in preserving minority rights. Since that is also a main purpose of bicameralism, it seems fitting that the Senate apportionment be a repository of the principle.

You say the equal suffrage Senate is necessary to give political minorities more of a voice, yet, how can an equal suffrage Senate be justified if only certain political minorities benefit? The Senate – presently with zero blacks or Latinos - certainly cannot be said to be a representative of racial minorities. Basically, the only group that benefits from the Senate’s apportionment scheme is rural (conservative) whites. City dwellers get screwed.

I did not mean to imply that state equality protects minority interests through representation of those interests. Indeed, the Senate is majoritarian in character: majority of states rather than persons. Instead, the way it protects minority rights is simply by setting two majoritarian houses against one another, rendering legislative action of any sort less likely. A third brake is the president’s veto power, a fourth judicial review and so on. All serve minority rights if not minority interests. In this I would include substantial political minorities of all stripes, however they may be defined.

Yes, the states are more than administrative units, but not much more. We have a national economy and culture, and the federal government is an entity of the people, not the states. Also, does not the preamble to the Constitution read “We the People,” as opposed to “We the States.” I’d say the overwhelming majority of persons living in the USA think of themselves as “Americans,” as opposed to “Minnesotans,” “Floridians,” etc.

I rather suspect that local attachments, even passionate ones, are more important than you suggest. Popular opinion on many divisive domestic policy issues varies substantially from region to region. Thankfully, different states may vary their policies, and citizens choose their state of residence, accordingly: an uptown New Yorker would probably be very unhappy were he transplanted to rural Alabama and vice versa, not least because of the public policies under which he would have to live.

A multiplicity of competing viewpoints struggling in the arena of ideas, rather than having one national consensus on everything, enlightens our debate and serves as one more tool to protect liberty.

Also, the states are not truly equal. Do California and Rhode Island contribute equally to the Treasury? If there were a draft, would Idaho and New York contribute equal numbers of troops? Of course not, equality of the states is a fiction. By what reason should the metropolitan area of Providence have political equality with half the West Coast?

By the reason that, in some spheres of public policy, states are free to pursue their own destinies in accordance with the will of their people without interference from other states. Of course states are unequal in many respects, but their equal political rights are not secured at auction. In several critical matters of right, states are equal with one another, and it is to recognize and preserve that equality that the principle is accorded substantial weight in our constitution.

Also, Senate equality creates many public policy problems. Look at farm subsidies. Look at how cities are drastically underfunded in their homeland security needs. Wyoming, with very few terrorist targets, get four times the money per person as New York. How is that fair? Also, in "Sizing Up the Senate," Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer demonstrate that the Senate almost always wins out in House-Senate funding disputes.

I’m not at all sure why the Senate “always wins” since the constitution gives equal power to the House and Senate on spending matters (maybe the House needs more backbone?). Why must public expenditures per state necessarily reflect the state’s population? Complex public policy considerations (as to how best to protect the homeland) should be dispositive. The real problem you seem to describe is that the people of one region are left unprotected by the willful neglect of the rest of the country. If so, it would be a scandal, a shame, an attack on the very idea of “one nation” - but not the fault of state equality in the Senate as such since the same could occur with a body apportioned by population.

Further, even partisan control of the Senate depends on inequality. The 49 Democratic Senators represent 20 million more people than the 51 Republican ones. From 1980 to 1986, the Republicans also only controlled the Senate due to small state domination. Before the New Deal realignment, the Democrats received an undue benefit from small state Senators.

Partisan control is simply a function of membership, which of course depends upon apportionment, which depends on the principle used to apportion. Ergo, if state equality is a suitable principle for apportioning membership, then it is a suitable principle for deciding partisan control.

I don’t mind some subsidy for small population states. Perhaps each state could be guaranteed two Senators, and then receive one Senator per 10,000,000 people (so CA would have a total of 5 Senators) Currently, 50 Senators are elected by 17% of the population, with that percentage falling. What will you say when half the Senate is elected by 10% of the population? Dinopup

I would not apply the principle of “equality of persons” in judging the fairness of the Senate; “equality of states” is the standard. So long as each of the 50 states has 1/50th of the Senate membership, that principle is fulfilled. --Pgva 08:30, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The principle of "equality of states" is outdated, a vestige of colonial history. The Constitution was a great step towards the idea of "government of the people" rather than "government of the states" through the establishment of a strong federal government. It would be much more democratic for the legislative branch to fulfill the concept of "We the People" and abolish the Senate, whose only purpose is to check democratic impulses and protect state power by empowering a minority of the population to check the vast majority. The Senate was the bullwark of slavery before the Civil War and of Jim Crow in the last century. --Thucydides411 06:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Cites please

There was never much dispute that the lower house would have population representation, that states were given equal votes in the upper house was a capitulation to small state demands. [...] Also, none of the major Framers of the Constitution, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin, favored equal representation.

Please provide a citation for this. anthony (see warning) 13:22, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This came from "Sizing Up the Senate," chap. 1.

you people r all nerdz. :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.90.17.182 (talk) 21:07, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Typo?

In point of manners, religions, and other circimstances, which sometimes beget affection between different communities, they were not more assimilated that the other states.l In ponit [???] of the staple productions they were as dissimilar as any three other States in the Union.

Is this a typo? a mistake in the original? anthony (see warning) 12:23, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

==What are the major components of the Great compromise and who put the thing on the headline and how do you get it off?==

Comment on quoting

This:

bicameral legislature consisting of a lower and upper house.

is presented as if it were the terms that the people noted in the sentence had presented it in those terms. If it's not a direct quote, it should be rephrased to indicate that the terms/interpretation are those of the topic-editor.

Tedickey 10:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Advertisement

The word "taxes" links to an off-site advertisement, however there is no text creating such a link in the edit mode. What is going on? Does Wikipedia do this on purpose, or is this complex vandalism? Is it even legal? FlashHawk4 (talk) 21:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't see "taxes" linked in the current revision.Tedickey (talk) 01:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Merging articles

Would it be justified to merge the Virginia Plan article into this one, considering how it (this article) outlines both the Virginia plan and the New Jersey plan? Why have two articles that contain the same information? Otherwise, remove the synopsis of the Virginia plan to focus more on the Great Compromise.Ykerzner (talk) 01:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The current split-presentation seems okay to me. Merging the topics would make it harder for the casual reader to focus on the different discussions Tedickey (talk) 10:27, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving from Philadelphia

Hmm, I just now moved a big block out of the history section of the greatly overgrown United States Constitution and then thought, oh no, I haven't warned the watchers of Connecticut about this. I hope my action will not be taken as taking WP:BOLD to the point of impoliteness, and especially I hope for help in neatening what amounts to a rough merge. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note Jim! I can't speak for everyone in the project but I have no problem with the edit. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Jim, looks like a pretty excellent edit to me. I've always thought this article ought to have more information than it did before given how important of an event it was. My only concern with your edit is that it isn't sourced with inline citations, but I think that can be fixed without too much trouble. Sailsbystars (talk) 16:20, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, on second inspection the merged material fits neatly enough, unlike some of my first drafts of transfers among articles. The defects are mainly original in the material, and should have been already repaired when the text was in its original overcrowded article. Alas, my own editorial talent and inclination run more to arrangement and linkage than citation, and my time will go to finding and fixing other cases of duplicative, unlinked, overlarge or oversmall articles and the like. I'll hope other editors in our assiduous volunteer corps will either tolerate any remaining shortcomings or correct them. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:02, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Revisions to "Aftermath" Section

I have deleted the following sentence:

Less populous Southern States were allowed to count three-fifths of all non-free, non-Native American people toward population counts and allocations.

This characterization of the Three-Fifths Compromise is inaccurate because, among other things, it suggests that the Southern States were all less populous than the Middle and Eastern (i.e., New England) States, whereas Virginia was the most populous State in the confederacy, and North Carolina's population was larger than those of four of the seven Northern States (counting Del. as a Southern State).

The sentence also, remarkably, employs even more clumsy and indirect language than the Three-Fifths Clause itself. Surely, at this late date, Wikipedia can refer to slaves as slaves. Further, the sentence suggests that there was a category of "non-free, Native American people", 100% of whom would have been counted in the federal ratio of representation.

I also replaced the word "wrangled" with "complicated", in the sentence,

This agreement allowed deliberations to continue and thus led to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which further wrangled the issue of popular representation in the House.

although I have no idea what the original writer meant by that sentence, and thus may not have clarified it.

Jdcrutch (talk) 19:27, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

adjournment or recess

"Therefore, on June 14, when the Convention was ready to consider the report on the Virginia plan, William Paterson of New Jersey requested an adjournment to allow certain delegations more time to prepare a substitute plan." Should that say a recess rather than an adjournment? RJFJR (talk) 19:25, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

From one to two senators

The article mentions the original draft of the compromise authorizing one senator per state, but never returns to the subject, so it is unclear how that proposal was amended into the final two senators per state form that was written into the Constitution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.170.65.234 (talk) 17:22, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Electoral College

There is no mention of the extension of this compromise into the configuration of the presidential election whereby the number of electors is always at least 3, regardless of state population size. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph Argenio (talk • contribs) 12:50, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 November 2021

Change James Madison to James Madison 137.83.19.148 (talk) 18:58, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: Are you referring to the one on the "Compromise" section? If so, it doesn't need to be linked, since it's already linked in the "Background" section: "James Madison and Hamilton were two of the leaders of the proportional...". See MOS:LINKONCE. —twotwofourtysix^{(My talk page and contributions)} 12:06, 4 November 2021 (UTC)