Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 9Page 10Page 11Page 12Page 13Page 14Page 15Page 16Page 17Page 18Page 19Page 20Page 21Page 22Page 23Page 24Page 25Page 26Page 27Page 28Page 29Page 30Page 31Page 32Page 33Page 34Page 35Page 36Page 37Page 38Page 39Page 40Page 41Page 42Page 43Page 44Page 45Page 46Page 47Congress and the Constitutional SystemCharles Stewart IIIThe Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Constitution that was crafted in Philadelphia over the spring and summer of 1787created an integrated system of government that was predicated on balancing power horizontallyand vertically. The vertical balance was between a national government with newly enhancedcapacities, and state governments, which had operated under considerable latitude ever sinceindependence. We now call this balance “federalism.” The horizontal balance was between thevarious components of the new national government itself, which had hitherto been organizedaround a unitary structure. We now call this balance the “separation of powers.”There was a single fulcrum supporting both axes of balance, and that was the newlyconstituted United States Congress. Even knowing nothing about the actual deliberations of theConstitutional Convention, the centrality of Congress in balancing federalism and the separationof powers is immediately evident in the text of the Constitution itself—fully half of theConstitution was given over to Article I, which constructs Congress. Compared with thesparseness of details in the rest of the document, Article I provided a substantial blueprint for thebody’s electoral base and political authority. Reflecting the experience of nearly half a century offailed attempts to knit together the thirteen colonies (now states) along the Atlantic seaboard,Article I’s provisions embodied a carefully crafted compromise that attempted to amass enoughpolitical authority to save the foundering experiment in independence from England.Popular understandings of the Constitution often treat it as a seamless example ofEnlightenment thinking applied to governing. It is true that the Framers drew heavily onEnlightenment thinkers, especially Hume, Montesque, and Locke, who advocated dividing2authority in order to simultaneously achieve the twin goals of effective government andindividual liberty. Yet other governments around the world have also been established on thesame Enlightenment principles, and almost all of them have come to different conclusions abouthow to balance power between the national and provincial governments, and between the variouscomponents of the national government itself. Thus, a tradition of ideas was important inguiding how Congress was initially placed within the American constitutional system, but ideaswere not enough.The additional ingredient was politics and a desire to fix a system that was obviouslyfailing in political, not intellectual terms. Yet to pull the national government away fromabsolute collapse, the Framers had to face the facts as they found them. What did they face? Onthe one hand they faced a Congress that was failing to attract a quorum and to enact legislationthat the states would voluntarily comply with. The result was increasing instability locally anddiscredit among the great European powers who were eager to forcefully reassert themselvesalong the eastern seaboard. On the other hand they faced states that enjoyed the independenceenshrined in the Articles of Confederation—large states, which were free to use their commercialpower to exploit smaller ones, and small states, which valued the equality that was enshrined inthe Articles as the best leverage they had to protect themselves the larger, wealthier states.How to get distrustful state governments to agree to give up actual political power inreturn for a promise of greater stability and standing in the world? The Framers were helped bytwo things. First, public officials and other social elites understood the gravity of the situationand shared a vague sense about the new direction the national government needed to go in. Theywere open to a proposal. Second, the Framers were deeply knowledgeable about the workings of3popular governments on the North American continent and around the world. They werepractical, informed, and moderate men. They inherited a tradition of popularly-electedassemblies on the North American continent that stretched back a century and a half. Almost allof them had served in the Continental Congress or state legislatures in the preceding decade, andso had a working sense of how legislatures actually behaved in a wide variety of governingcontexts. Some had served in unicameral legislatures, others in bicameral settings, and some insettings that could even be considered tricameral. Some came from states with an executive whohad no check over legislative pronouncements—including everyone who had served in theConfederation Congress—others from states whose governors enjoyed an absolute veto overlegislative enactments, and yet others from states between these two extremes.Using their knowledge and the political opening they enjoyed, the Framers threaded thepolitical needle they were given, producing a significant departure from the past that wascompelling enough to overcome the substantial doubts that were raised against it in theratification effort.And then life under the Constitution began. The text of the Constitution, especiallyArticle I, was fairly prescriptive, but it was not self-enforcing. It was tailored for a politicalsystem that was populated by economic and social elites whose ideas of a continental nation wereonly a dream. But politics migrated from elite to mass and the center of population wanderedever westward. Some assumptions of the Framers turned out to be wrong. Viewed at a greatdistance from the Constitutional Convention, the influence of the Constitution on Congress hasproven to be varied and not always obvious.4The purpose of this essay is to examine how the Constitution has molded nationalpolitics, particularly the politics of Congress, from 1789 to the present. My attention is on theConstitution (particularly Article I) as a political document, in its conception andimplementation. In its conception, the Constitution was political because its purpose was toaddress a political crisis; its ratification by the states was constrained by the stuff of normalpolitics. In the words of John Roche, the