Rick Santorum - United States Senator, Pennsylvania


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How the Senate Works

For a complete over view of the United States Senate please go to www.senate.gov.  Below you will find some fast facts about the United States Senate and the role it plays in our government as the upper chamber of the legislative branch.


Two Senators Per State

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State.  [U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 1]

In its final form, the clause in the Constitution is deceptively simple.  "The Senate shall be composed of two senators from each state" appears to be a single provision, the designated number of senators per state.  Delegates agreed to this number, however, only after they had considered a larger matter: legislative representation.  While representation proved to be the most controversial issue in the convention, delegates determined the number of senators quickly and with little dispute.


Length of Senate Terms

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years.
[U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 1]

The six-year Senate term represented a compromise between those constitutional framers who wanted a strong, independent Senate and those who feared the possible tyranny of an aristocratic upper house, insulated from popular opinion.  Although the six-year term was not utilized in Parliament, Congress under the Articles of Confederation, or the states' upper houses, these institutions gave the participants at the Constitutional Convention some insight into the impact of term lengths on legislative bodies.  While few delegates to the 1787 convention wanted to emulate the House of Lords' lifelong terms or the Articles of Confederation's annual appointment of legislators subject to recall, the framers' reaction against these extremes helped formulate their arguments for and against long terms in the Senate.


Senate Classes

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. [U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 2]

At the start of the first session of Congress in 1789, the senators were divided into the three classes by lot with same-state senators assigned to separate groups.  The first class' term expired in two years, the second in four years, and the third in six years.  Subsequent elections to all classes were for the full six-year Senate term.


Constitutional Qualifications

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen. [Article I, section 3, clause 3]

Delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention supported establishing membership limitations for House and Senate members.  Influenced by British and state precedents, they set age, citizenship, and inhabitancy qualifications for senators, but voted against proposed religion and property requirements.
 


President of the Senate

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote unless they be equally divided. [U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 4]

In The Federalist, No. 68, New York delegate Alexander Hamilton explained the necessity of the vice president's Senate position.  To secure definitive resolutions, the Senate's president must be able to cast tie-breaking votes, yet be denied a vote at all other times.  Therefore, the Senate's presiding officer must not be a member of the Senate, nor should a senator be next in line for the presidency, since the president's successor should be chosen in the same manner as the president.


Other Senate Offices

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States. [Article 1, section 3, clause 5]

Before Constitutional framers designated the vice president as the president of the Senate on September 7, 1787, they granted senators the right to choose other Senate officers, including those from outside the elected body.  The clause was not debated at the convention, but simply assumed in the Committee of Detail's report to the Constitutional Convention on August 6.  According to James Madison, numerous precedents made the measure "so obvious that it [was] wholly unnecessary to vindicate it."   Members of Parliament had been selecting clerks of the house and sergeants at arms for hundreds of years, and state legislatures appointed various administrative officers.  The Senate modeled its own offices of the secretary, the sergeant at arms, and the doorkeeper after positions established in the Continental Congress.


Impeachment Trials

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments . . . And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. [Article I, section 3, clause 6]

Early in the 1787 Constitutional Convention, most delegates agreed that the inclusion of an impeachment provision would help to hold national officers accountable for their actions.  The Senate's role in impeachment trials, however, developed after months of consideration behind the closed doors of committee rooms.  Based on those of the British Parliament and the state constitutions, the Senate impeachment provision gave senators the responsibility for trying impeached officials, including the president of the United States.


Treaties

He shall have Powers, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur... [Article II, section 2, clause 2]

Although adopted by the convention, the treaty clause continued to stir debate in the period before the Constitution's ratification.  As one of the clause's strongest proponents, Alexander Hamilton defended the provision in The Federalist, No. 75. Remarkably, given the delegates' extreme dissension over treaty-making, he wrote, the clause "is one of the best digested and unexceptionable parts of the plan."


Nominations

[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States . . . . [U.S. Constitution, Article II, section 2, clause 2]

Debated over the course of several weeks, the Constitution's nomination clause split the delegates into two factions: those who wanted the executive to have the sole power of appointment, and those who wanted the national legislature, and more specifically, the Senate, to have that responsibility.  The latter faction followed precedents established by the Articles of Confederation and most of the state constitutions.  These documents granted the Continental Congress and the state legislatures the power to make appointments.  The Massachusetts constitution provided an alternative model, however.  For over one hundred years,Massachusetts had divided the appointment responsibilities between its governor, who made the nominations, and its legislative council, which confirmed the appointments.
 
Rather than adopt the Massachusetts model immediately, the convention delegates initially granted the president the power to appoint the officers of the executive branch and, given that judges' life-long terms would extend past the authority of any one president, the Senate would appoint the members of the judiciary.  Framers in favor of a strong executive, however, argued that Senate appointments would lead to government by a "cabal" swayed by the interests of constituents.  Other delegates, fearful of monarchies, wanted to remove the president entirely from the appointment process.  On September 4, the Committee of Eleven reported an amended appointment clause.  Unanimously adopted on September 7, the clause, based on the Massachusetts model,  provided that the president shall nominate and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint the officers of the United States.


Sources

Anderson, Thorton. Creating the Constitution: The Convention of 1787 and the First Congress. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
 
Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay.  The Federalist Papers.  Edited by Clinton Rossiter.  New York: Mentor, 1999.
 
Haynes, George. The Senate of the United States. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938.
 
Jillson, Calvin C.  Constitution Making: Conflict and Consensus in the Federal Convention of 1787.  New York: Agathon Press, 1988.
 
Kurland, Philip B. and Ralph Lerner.  The Founders' Constitution.  4 volumes.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
 
Madison, James.  Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787.  Athens, OH: Ohio University, 1966.
 
Story, Joseph.  Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.  2 volumes, fifth edition.  Edited by Melville Bigelow.  Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1891.
 
Swindler, William F., ed. Sources and Documents of United States Constitutions.  10 volumes. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1973-1979.
 
Van Doren, Carl.  The Great Rehearsal: The Story of the Making and Ratifying of the Constitution of the United States.  New York: The Viking Press, 1948.


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