Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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The Seventeenth Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the
The amendment was proposed by the 62nd Congress in 1912 and became part of the Constitution on April 8, 1913, on ratification by three-quarters (36) of the state legislatures. Sitting senators were not affected until their existing terms expired. The transition began with two special elections in Georgia[1] and in Maryland, then in earnest with the November 1914 election; it was complete on March 4, 1919, when the senators chosen by the November 1918 election took office.
Text
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.[2]
Background
Original composition
Originally, under
Additionally, the longer terms and avoidance of popular election turned the Senate into a body that could counter the populism of the House. While the representatives operated in a two-year direct election cycle, making them frequently accountable to their constituents, the senators could afford to "take a more detached view of issues coming before Congress".[8] State legislatures retained the theoretical right to "instruct" their senators to vote for or against proposals, thus giving the states both direct and indirect representation in the federal government.[9] The Senate was part of a formal bicameralism, with the members of the Senate and House responsible to completely distinct constituencies; this helped defeat the problem of the federal government being subject to "special interests".[10] Members of the Constitutional Convention considered the Senate to be parallel to the British House of Lords as an "upper house", containing the "better men" of society, but improved upon as they would be conscientiously chosen by the upper houses of state legislatures for fixed terms, and not merely inherited for life as in the British system, subject to a monarch's arbitrary expansion. It was hoped they would provide abler deliberation and greater stability than the House of Representatives due to the senators' status.[11]
Issues
Those in favor of popular elections for senators believed two primary problems were caused by the original provisions: legislative corruption and electoral deadlocks.[12] There was a sense that senatorial elections were "bought and sold", changing hands for favors and sums of money rather than because of the competence of the candidate. Between 1857 and 1900, the Senate investigated three elections over corruption. In 1900, for example, William A. Clark had his election voided after the Senate concluded that he had bought votes in the Montana legislature. But conservative analysts Bybee and Todd Zywicki believe this concern was largely unfounded; there was a "dearth of hard information" on the subject.[13] In more than a century of legislative elections of U.S. senators, only ten cases were contested for allegations of impropriety.[14]
Electoral deadlocks were another issue. Because state legislatures were charged with deciding whom to appoint as senators, the system relied on their ability to agree. Some states could not, and thus delayed sending senators to Congress; in a few cases, the system broke down to the point where states completely lacked representation in the Senate.[15] Deadlocks started to become an issue in the 1850s, with a deadlocked Indiana legislature allowing a Senate seat to sit vacant for two years.[16] The tipping point came in 1865 with the election of John P. Stockton (D-NJ), which happened after the New Jersey legislature changed its rules regarding the definition of a quorum and was thus by plurality instead of by absolute majority.[17]
In 1866, Congress acted to standardize a two-step process for Senate elections.[18] In the first step, each chamber of the state legislature would meet separately to vote. The following day, the chambers would meet in "joint assembly" to assess the results, and if a majority in both chambers had voted for the same person, he would be elected. If not, the joint assembly would vote for a senator, with each member receiving a vote. If no person received a majority, the joint assembly was required to keep convening every day to take at least one vote until a senator was elected.[19] Nevertheless, between 1891 and 1905, 46 elections were deadlocked across 20 states;[14] in one extreme example, a Senate seat for Delaware went unfilled from 1899 until 1903.[20] The business of holding elections also caused great disruption in the state legislatures, with a full third of the Oregon House of Representatives choosing not to swear the oath of office in 1897 due to a dispute over an open Senate seat. The result was that Oregon's legislature was unable to pass legislation that year.[20]
Zywicki again argues that this was not a serious issue. Deadlocks were a problem, but they were the exception rather than the norm; many legislatures did not deadlock over elections at all. Most of those that did in the 19th century were the newly admitted western states, which suffered from "inexperienced legislatures and weak party discipline ... as western legislatures gained experience, deadlocks became less frequent." While Utah suffered from deadlocks in 1897 and 1899, they became what Zywicki refers to as "a good teaching experience", and Utah never again failed to elect senators.
Eventually, legislative elections held in a state's Senate election years were perceived to have become so dominated by the business of picking senators that the state's choice for senator distracted the electorate from all other pertinent issues.[23] Senator John H. Mitchell noted that the Senate became the "vital issue" in all legislative campaigns, with the policy stances and qualifications of state legislative candidates ignored by voters who were more interested in the indirect Senate election.[24] To remedy this, some state legislatures created "advisory elections" that served as de facto general elections, allowing legislative campaigns to focus on local issues.[24]
Calls for reform
Calls for a constitutional amendment regarding Senate elections started in the early 19th century, with Henry R. Storrs in 1826 proposing an amendment to provide for popular election.[25] Similar amendments were introduced in 1829 and 1855, with the "most prominent" proponent being Andrew Johnson, who raised the issue in 1868 and considered the idea's merits "so palpable" that no additional explanation was necessary.[26] As noted above, in the 1860s, there was a major congressional dispute over the issue, with the House and Senate voting to veto the appointment of John P. Stockton to the Senate due to his approval by a plurality of the New Jersey Legislature rather than a majority. In reaction, the Congress passed a bill in July 1866 that required state legislatures to elect senators by an absolute majority.[26]
By the 1890s, support for the introduction of direct election for the Senate had substantially increased, and reformers worked on two fronts. On the first front, the Populist Party incorporated the direct election of senators into its Omaha Platform, adopted in 1892.[27] In 1908, Oregon passed the first law basing the selection of U.S. senators on a popular vote. Oregon was soon followed by Nebraska.[28] Proponents for popular election noted that ten states already had non-binding primaries for Senate candidates,[29] in which the candidates would be voted on by the public, effectively serving as advisory referendums instructing state legislatures how to vote;[29] reformers campaigned for more states to introduce a similar method.
On the second national legislative front, reformers worked toward a constitutional amendment, which was strongly supported in the House of Representatives but initially opposed by the Senate. Bybee notes that the state legislatures, which would lose power if the reforms went through, were supportive of the campaign. By 1910, 31 state legislatures had passed resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment allowing direct election, and in the same year ten Republican senators who were opposed to reform were forced out of their seats, acting as a "wake-up call to the Senate".[29]
Reformers included
Hoar replied that "the people" were both a less permanent and a less trusted body than state legislatures, and moving the responsibility for the election of senators to them would see it passing into the hands of a body that "[lasted] but a day" before changing. Other counterarguments were that renowned senators could not have been elected directly and that, since a large number of senators had experience in the House (which was already directly elected), a constitutional amendment would be pointless.[32] The reform was considered by opponents to threaten the rights and independence of the states, who were "sovereign, entitled ... to have a separate branch of Congress ... to which they could send their ambassadors." This was countered by the argument that a change in the mode in which senators were elected would not change their responsibilities.[33]
The Senate freshman class of 1910 brought new hope to the reformers. Fourteen of the thirty newly elected senators had been elected through party primaries, which amounted to popular choice in their states. More than half of the states had some form of primary selection for the Senate. The Senate finally joined the House to submit the Seventeenth Amendment to the states for ratification, nearly ninety years after it first was presented to the Senate in 1826.[34]
By 1912, 239 political parties at both the state and national level had pledged some form of direct election, and 33 states had introduced the use of direct primaries.[35] Twenty-seven states had called for a constitutional convention on the subject, with 31 states needed to reach the threshold; Arizona and New Mexico each achieved statehood that year (bringing the total number of states to 48), and were expected to support the motion. Alabama and Wyoming, already states, had passed resolutions in favor of a convention without formally calling for one.[36]
Proposal and ratification
Proposal in Congress
In 1911, the House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 39 proposing a constitutional amendment for direct election of senators. The original resolution passed by the House contained the following clause:[37]
The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators shall be as prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof.
This so-called "race rider" clause would have strengthened the powers of states over senatorial elections and weakened those of Congress by overriding Congress's power to override state laws affecting the manner of senatorial elections.[38]
Since the 1890s, nearly all blacks in the South, and many poor whites, had been
When the resolution came before the Senate, Senator Joseph L. Bristow (R-KS) proposed an amendment which eliminated the rider. This amendment was approved by 45 votes to 44 after Vice President Sherman cast a tie-breaking "yea" vote.[39]
The amended resolution was then adopted by a vote of 64 to 24,with four not voting.[40] Nearly a year later, the House accepted the change. The conference report that would become the Seventeenth Amendment was approved by the Senate in a 42 to 36 vote on April 12, 1912, and by the House 238 to 39, with 110 not voting on May 13, 1912.
Ratification by the states
Having been passed by Congress, the amendment was sent to the states for ratification and was ratified by:[41]
- Massachusetts: May 22, 1912
- Arizona: June 3, 1912
- Minnesota: June 10, 1912
- New York: January 15, 1913
- Kansas: January 17, 1913
- Oregon: January 23, 1913
- North Carolina: January 25, 1913
- California: January 28, 1913
- Michigan: January 28, 1913
- Iowa: January 30, 1913
- Montana: January 30, 1913
- Idaho: January 31, 1913
- West Virginia: February 4, 1913
- Colorado: February 5, 1913
- Nevada: February 6, 1913
- Texas: February 7, 1913
- Washington: February 7, 1913
- Wyoming: February 8, 1913
- Arkansas: February 11, 1913
- Maine: February 11, 1913
- Illinois: February 13, 1913
- North Dakota: February 14, 1913
- Wisconsin: February 18, 1913
- Indiana: February 19, 1913
- New Hampshire: February 19, 1913
- Vermont: February 19, 1913
- South Dakota: February 19, 1913
- Oklahoma: February 24, 1913
- Ohio: February 25, 1913
- Missouri: March 7, 1913
- New Mexico: March 13, 1913
- Nebraska: March 14, 1913
- New Jersey: March 17, 1913
- Tennessee: April 1, 1913
- Pennsylvania: April 2, 1913
- Connecticut: April 8, 1913
With 36 states having ratified the Seventeenth Amendment, it was certified by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan on May 31, 1913, as part of the Constitution.[41] The amendment has subsequently been ratified by: - Louisiana: June 11, 1914
- Alabama: April 11, 2002[42]
- Delaware: July 1, 2010[43] (after rejecting the amendment on March 18, 1913)
- Maryland: April 1, 2012[44][45][46]
- Rhode Island: June 20, 2014
The Utah legislature rejected the amendment on February 26, 1913. No action on the amendment has been completed by Florida,[47] Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Alaska or Hawaii. Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states at the time of the amendment's proposal, and have never taken any official action to support or oppose the amendment since achieving statehood.
Effect
The Seventeenth Amendment altered the process for electing United States senators and changed the way vacancies would be filled. Originally, the Constitution required state legislatures to fill Senate vacancies.
According to Judge Bybee, the Seventeenth Amendment had a dramatic impact on the political composition of the U.S. Senate.
The reputation of corrupt and arbitrary state legislatures continued to decline as the Senate joined the House of Representatives in implementing popular reforms. Bybee has argued that the amendment led to complete "ignominy" for state legislatures without the buttress of a state-based check on Congress. In the decades following the Seventeenth Amendment, the federal government was enabled to enact progressive measures.[50] However, Schleiches argues that the separation of state legislatures and the Senate had a beneficial effect on the states, as it led state legislative campaigns to focus on local rather than national issues.[24]
New Deal legislation is another example of expanding federal regulation overruling the state legislatures promoting their local state interests in coal, oil, corn and cotton.[51] Ure agrees, saying that not only is each senator now free to ignore his state's interests, senators "have incentive to use their advice-and-consent powers to install Supreme Court justices who are inclined to increase federal power at the expense of state sovereignty".[52] Over the first half of the 20th century, with a popularly elected Senate confirming nominations, both Republican and Democratic, the Supreme Court began to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, overturning state laws whenever they harmed individual state citizens.[53] It aimed to limit the influence of the wealthy.[54]
Filling vacancies
The Seventeenth Amendment requires a governor to call a special election to fill vacancies in the Senate.[55] It also allows a state's legislature to permit its governor to make temporary appointments, which last until a special election is held to fill the vacancy. Currently, all but four states (North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin) permit such appointments.[56] The Constitution does not set out how the temporary appointee is to be selected.
First direct elections to the Senate
Oregon held primaries in 1908 in which the parties would run candidates for that position, and the state legislature pledged to choose the winner as the new senator.[58]
New Mexico, admitted to statehood in 1912, chose only its first two senators legislatively. Arizona, admitted to statehood in 1912, chose its first two senators by advisory popular vote. Alaska, and Hawaii, admitted to statehood in 1959, have never chosen a U.S. senator legislatively.[57]
The first election subject to the Seventeenth Amendment was a
The first direct elections to the Senate following the Seventeenth Amendment being adopted were:[57]
- In Maryland on November 4, 1913: a class 1 special electiondue to a vacancy, for a term ending in 1917.
- In Alabama on May 11, 1914: a class 3 special election due to a vacancy, for a term ending in 1915.
- Nationwide in 1914: All 32 class 3 senators, term 1915–1921
- Nationwide in 1916: All 32 class 1 senators, term 1917–1923
- Nationwide in 1918: All 32 class 2 senators, term 1919–1925
Court cases and interpretation controversies
In Trinsey v. Pennsylvania (1991),[59] the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit was faced with a situation where, following the death of Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, Governor Bob Casey had provided for a replacement and for a special election that did not include a primary.[60] A voter and prospective candidate, John S. Trinsey Jr., argued that the lack of a primary violated the Seventeenth Amendment and his right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.[61] The Third Circuit rejected these arguments, ruling that the Seventeenth Amendment does not require primaries.[62]
Another subject of analysis is whether statutes restricting the authority of governors to appoint temporary replacements are constitutional. Vikram Amar, writing in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, claims Wyoming's requirement that its governor fill a senatorial vacancy by nominating a person of the same party as the person who vacated that seat violates the Seventeenth Amendment.[63] This is based on the text of the Seventeenth Amendment, which states that "the legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments". The amendment only empowers the legislature to delegate the authority to the governor and, once that authority has been delegated, does not permit the legislature to intervene. The authority is to decide whether the governor shall have the power to appoint temporary senators, not whom the governor may appoint.[64] Sanford Levinson, in his rebuttal to Amar, argues that rather than engaging in a textual interpretation, those examining the meaning of constitutional provisions should interpret them in the fashion that provides the most benefit, and that legislatures' being able to restrict gubernatorial appointment authority provides a substantial benefit to the states.[65]
Reform and repeal efforts
Notwithstanding controversies over the effects of the Seventeenth Amendment, advocates have emerged to reform or repeal the amendment. At the beginning of President
Some members of the Tea Party movement argued for repealing the Seventeenth Amendment entirely, claiming it would protect states' rights and reduce the power of the federal government.[68] On March 2, 2016, the Utah legislature approved Senate Joint Resolution No. 2 asking Congress to offer an amendment to the United States Constitution that would repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.[69] As of 2010[update], no other states had supported such an amendment, and some politicians who had made statements in favor of repealing the amendment had subsequently reversed their position on this.[68]
On July 28, 2017, after Republican senators John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against the Health Care Freedom Act, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee endorsed the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment. He claimed that senators chosen by state legislatures "will work for their states and respect [the Tenth Amendment]",[70] and also that direct election of senators is a major cause of the "swamp".[71]
In September 2020, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska endorsed the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.[72][73]
Citations
- ^ "BACON, Augustus Octavius (1839–1914)". Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress. Archived from the original on February 24, 2020. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
became the first U.S. Senator elected by popular vote following ratification of the 17th Amendment, on July 15, 1913
- ^ "The Constitution of the United States Amendments 11–27". National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original on May 26, 2013. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
- ^ Zywicki (1997) p. 169
- ^ Vile (2003) p. 404
- ^ Zywicki (1994) p. 1013
- ^ Riker (1955) p. 452
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 516.
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 515.
- ^ Zywicki (1994) p. 1019
- ^ Zywicki (1997) p. 176
- ^ Zywicki (1997) p. 180
- ^ a b Bybee (1997) p. 538
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 539.
- ^ a b Zywicki (1994) p. 1022
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 541.
- ^ "Direct Election of Senators". United States Senate. Archived from the original on December 6, 2017. Retrieved June 26, 2014.
- ^ Schiller et al. (July 2013) p. 836
- ^ An Act to regulate the Times and Manner of holding Elections for Senators in Congress, July 25, 1866, ch. 245, 14 Stat. 243.
- ^ Schiller et al. (July 2013) pp. 836–37
- ^ a b Bybee (1997) p. 542
- ^ Zywicki (1994) p. 1024
- ^ Ure (2007) p. 286
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 543.
- ^ a b c Schleicher, David (February 27, 2014). "States' Wrongs". Slate. Archived from the original on October 15, 2014. Retrieved October 9, 2014.
- OCLC 232129877.
- ^ a b Bybee 1997, p. 536.
- OCLC 185508759.
- ^ "Direct Election of Senators" Archived December 6, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, United States Senate webpage, Origins and Development—Institutional.
- ^ a b c Bybee (1997) p. 537
- ISBN 978-0-19-536761-4. pp. 22–23.
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 544.
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 545.
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 546.
- ISBN 978-0-19-536761-4. p. 23.
- ^ Rossum (1999) p. 708
- ^ Rossum (1999) p. 710
- ^ "17th Amendment: Direct Election of U.S. Senators". August 15, 2016. Archived from the original on April 4, 2017. Retrieved April 3, 2017.
- ^ Zachary Clopton & Steven E. Art, "The Meaning of the Seventeenth Amendment and a Century of State Defiance" Archived April 4, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, 107 Northwestern University Law Review 1181 (2013), pp. 1191–1192
- ^ Proceedings of the US Senate, 12 June 1911. Congressional Record, vol. 47, pt. 2, pg. 1923.
- ^ "17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Direct Election of U.S. Senators". August 15, 2016. Archived from the original on April 28, 2017. Retrieved April 3, 2017.
- ^ a b James J. Kilpatrick, ed. (1961). The Constitution of the United States and Amendments Thereto. Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government. p. 49.
- ^ POM-309 Archived January 15, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, House Joint Resolution No. 12, A joint resolution adopted by the Legislature of the State of Alabama relative to ratifying the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Volume 148 Congressional Record page 18241 (permanent, bound edition) and page S9419 (preliminary, soft-cover edition). September 26, 2002. Retrieved May 10, 2012.[chronology citation needed]
- ^ "Formally Ratifying the 17th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Providing for the Popular Election of Senators to the United States Senate". State of Delaware. Archived from the original on February 10, 2015. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
- ^ Senate Joint Resolution 2, April 1, 2012, archived from the original on December 14, 2013, retrieved April 29, 2012
- ^ House Joint Resolution 3, April 1, 2012, archived from the original on December 14, 2013, retrieved April 29, 2012
- ^ Bills signing May 22, 2012 (PDF), May 22, 2012, archived from the original (PDF) on January 15, 2013, retrieved May 23, 2012
- ^ At the time, Article XVI, Section 19, of the Florida Constitution provided that "No Convention nor Legislature of this State shall act upon any amendment of the Constitution of the United States proposed by Congress to the several States, unless such Convention or Legislature shall have been elected after such amendment is submitted." The first legislature elected after such submission did not meet until April 5, 1913. See Fla. Const. of 1885, Art. III, § 2. By that time, the amendment had been ratified by 35 states, and, as noted above, would be ratified by the 36th state on April 8, 1913, a circumstance which made any action by the Florida Legislature unnecessary.
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 552.
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 552. Similarly, he believes the Republican Revolution of 1994 would not have happened; instead, the Democrats would have controlled 70 seats in the Senate to the Republicans' 30. See Bybee 1997, p. 553
- ^ Bybee 1997, p. 535. This was partially fueled by the senators; he wrote in the Northwestern University Law Review:
Politics, like nature, abhorred a vacuum, so senators felt the pressure to do something, namely enact laws. Once senators were no longer accountable to and constrained by state legislatures, the maximizing function for senators was unrestrained; senators almost always found in their own interest to procure federal legislation, even to the detriment of state control of traditional state functions.
See Bybee 1997, p. 536.
- ^ Rossum (1999) p. 715
- ^ Ure (2007) p. 288
- special interest groups to fill the void; with citizens replacing state legislators as the Senate's electorate, with citizens being less able to monitor the actions of their senators, the Senate became more susceptible to pressure from interest groups, who in turn were more influential due to the centralization of power in the federal government; an interest group no longer needed to lobbymany state legislatures, and could instead focus its efforts on the federal government. See Ure (2007) p. 293.
- ^ Berke, Richard L. (February 17, 2002). "Money Talks; Don't Discount the Fat Cats". The New York Times. Retrieved February 13, 2021.
- ^ Vile (2010) p. 197
- ^ Neale, Thomas H. (April 12, 2018). "U.S. Senate Vacancies: Contemporary Developments and Perspectives" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 5, 2018. Retrieved October 13, 2018 – via fas.org.
- ^ ISBN 0-7864-0283-0.
- ^ "Speech to the People of Washington by Senator Jonathan Bourne Jr. of Oregon, n.d." U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. Retrieved March 22, 2022.
- ^ Trinsey v. Pennsylvania, 941 (F.2d 1991).
- ^ Gold (1992) p. 202
- ^ Novakovic (1992) p. 940
- ^ Novakovic (1992) p. 945
- ^ Amar (2008) p. 728
- ^ Amar (2008) pp. 729–30
- ^ Levinson (2008) pp. 718–9
- ^ a b Hulse, Carl (March 10, 2009). "New Idea on Capitol Hill: To Join Senate, Get Votes". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 30, 2011. Retrieved September 19, 2011.
- ^ "S.J.Res.7—A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to the election of Senators". August 6, 2009. Archived from the original on June 15, 2014. Retrieved June 15, 2014.
- ^ a b Firestone, David (May 31, 2010). "So You Still Want to Choose Your Senator?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 13, 2012. Retrieved September 19, 2011.
- ^ "SJR002". State of Utah. Archived from the original on March 29, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
- ^ "Gov. Mike Huckabee on Twitter: 'Time to repeal 17th Amendment. Founders had it right-Senators chosen by state legislatures. Will work for their states and respect 10th amid'". Archived from the original on October 4, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2020.
- ^ "Ignorance of history of 17th Amendment is revealed by response to my earlier Tweet. Direct election of Senate is major cause of #swamp". Archived from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2020.
- ^ "Ben Sasse Calls for Repealing 17th Amendment, Eliminating Popular-Vote Senate Elections". National Review. September 9, 2020. Archived from the original on September 28, 2020. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved August 27, 2023.
General and cited references
- Amar, Vikram David (2008). "Are Statutes Constraining Gubernatorial Power to Make Temporary Appointments to the United States Senate Constitutional Under the Seventeenth Amendment?". Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. 35 (4). SSRN 1103590.
- ISSN 0029-3571.
- Gold, Kevin M. (1992). "Trinsey v. Pennsylvania: State Discretion to Regulate United States Senate Vacancy". ISSN 1064-5012.
- Haynes, George Henry (1912). Ringwalt, Ralph Curtis (ed.). The Election of Senators. H. Holt.
- Hoebeke, Christopher Hyde (1995). The road to mass democracy: original intent and the Seventeenth Amendment. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-217-4.
- Kochan, Donald J. (2003). "State Laws and the Independent Judiciary: An Analysis of the Effects of the Seventeenth Amendment on the Number of Supreme Court Cases Holding State Laws Unconstitutional". Albany Law Review. 66 (1). SSRN 907518.
- Levinson, Sanford (2008). "Political Party and Senatorial Succession: A Response to Vikram Amar on How Best to Interpret the Seventeenth Amendment". Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. 35 (4). ISSN 0094-5617.
- Novakovic, Michael B. (1992). "Constitutional Law: Filling Senate Vacancies". Villanova Law Review. 37 (1). ISSN 0042-6229.
- Riker, William H. (1955). "The Senate and American Federalism". American Political Science Review. 49 (2). American Political Science Association: 452–469. S2CID 144680174.
- Rossum, Ralph A. (1999). "The Irony of Constitutional Democracy: Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment". San Diego Law Review. 36 (3). ISSN 0886-3210.
- Tushnet, Mark (2010). The Constitution of the United States of America: A Contextual Analysis. Hart Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84113-738-4.
- Ure, James Christian (2007). "You Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours: Why the Federal Marriage Amendment Should Also Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment". ISSN 1052-343X.
- Vile, John R. (2003). Encyclopedia of constitutional amendments, proposed amendments, and amending issues, 1789–2002 (2nd ed.). ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-428-8.
- Vile, John R. (2010). A companion to the United States Constitution and its amendments (5th ed.). ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-38008-2.
- Zywicki, Todd J. (1994). "Senators and Special Interests: A Public Choice Analysis of the Seventeenth Amendment" (PDF). Oregon Law Review. 73 (1). University of Oregon School of Law. ISSN 0196-2043.
- Zywicki, Todd J. (1997). "Beyond the Shell and Husk of History: The History of the Seventeenth Amendment and its Implications for Current Reform Proposals" (PDF). Cleveland State Law Review. 45 (1). Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. ISSN 0009-8876.
- Wendy J. Schiller and Charles Stewart III (May 2013), The 100th Anniversary of the 17th Amendment: A Promise Unfulfilled?, Issues in Governance Studies, Number 59 May 2013
- Schiller, Wendy J.; Stewart, Charles; Xiong, Benjamin (July 2013). "U.S. Senate Elections before the 17th Amendment: Political Party Cohesion and Conflict 1871–1913". The Journal of Politics. 75 (3): 835–847. .