Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's an article from Harvard Law Review so judge for yourself:

Pack the Union: A Proposal to Admit New States for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution to Ensure Equal Representation

[OttoVonBismarck]

I read that article back when it came out, and don't plan to read it again, so my memory of it may be hazy--but I actually think at least the core of its proposition is sound--the extreme anti-democratic nature of the U.S. Senate is in fact, a major problem.

The Senate made great sense when the country was founded, and the Senate was developed as a compromise. We finished adding the lion's share of our country's States in an era when no one was really concerned that much about equal representation, the 19th century not being a time of a particularly liberal franchise or particularly democratic views. So no one ever seems to have thought as we kept adding states of widely disparate sizes that we were contributing to a particular problem.

Additionally in the 19th century, when we still frequently operated as a "strong confederation" with a Federal government only rising to preeminence as needed, an equally weighted body like the Senate also seemed to make more sense, and the troubles that could arise due to that weighting seemed less concerning since most important government went on at the State level anyway.

In the modern context of how our country has developed, the Senate is really just not an appropriate element for a modern democratic country. I think we either need to roll back the Federal government quite a bit and become little more than a confederation of independent nations (in which case the Senate's form is fine), or we need to acknowledge the weaknesses of the Senate and consider ways to work around it. The Harvard Law Review suggestion just seems like a fast track to civil war, so probably is not a wise path, but at least getting the dialogue out there and percolating is something that should be done, and perhaps in a few centuries it will materialize into action.

[grumbler]

Correct, you would just change the size of the "Federal District", no constitutional amendment was required for the retrocession of the Virginia land west of the Potomac given to the new district. You could even fairly rapidly follow the same process--retrocess all but a small amount of land around key Federal buildings to Maryland, and then Maryland quickly would apply to the Congress to divide off that portion of land as a new state (West Virginia has set the legal standard of this being allowed, as per the constitution you can sub-divide states as long as the legislature of the state in question is in favor of it.) I'm not even sure you'd need the Maryland intermediary step, but if you did politicians in Maryland have always been mostly on the side of statehood so would likely be pliant. If Larry Hogan tried to resist I suspect he'd face veto overrides.

It isn't clear that the land abandoned by the District would automatically go back to Maryland, but clearly Maryland would have to agree to any such change.

[DGuller]

There is no limit. In fact one of the more silly/dangerous schemes I've heard of is a proposal to admit DC not as one, but 100 states, and use the newfound majority to basically fully rewrite the constitution, since you'd be able the ram amendments through.

  Might not be a bad idea.  In the end you should just ram through an amendment to merge DC back into one state and make state splitting illegal.  Or maybe first ram through an amendment to convert US into a parliamentary democracy.  The civil war might be a bit of a downer, though.

[HVC]

You're due for another anyway, might as well make it worth your while

[grumbler]

Is there a limit to states dividing themselves?  Why can't Wyoming petition to divide itself into 100 states?

Portions of Wyoming could petition for statehood but Congress wouldn't be likely to pass bills creating such new states.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's an article from Harvard Law Review so judge for yourself:

It's a "Note" - i.e. a student written article at the end written by a member of the current staff.
Wouldn't get too twisted up about it.

[The Minsky Moment]

but would not be an economically viable entity on its own.

Not sure what this part means or what the significance is. 

[celedhring]

I read that article back when it came out, and don't plan to read it again, so my memory of it may be hazy--but I actually think at least the core of its proposition is sound--the extreme anti-democratic nature of the U.S. Senate is in fact, a major problem.

The Senate made great sense when the country was founded, and the Senate was developed as a compromise. We finished adding the lion's share of our country's States in an era when no one was really concerned that much about equal representation, the 19th century not being a time of a particularly liberal franchise or particularly democratic views. So no one ever seems to have thought as we kept adding states of widely disparate sizes that we were contributing to a particular problem.

Additionally in the 19th century, when we still frequently operated as a "strong confederation" with a Federal government only rising to preeminence as needed, an equally weighted body like the Senate also seemed to make more sense, and the troubles that could arise due to that weighting seemed less concerning since most important government went on at the State level anyway.

In the modern context of how our country has developed, the Senate is really just not an appropriate element for a modern democratic country. I think we either need to roll back the Federal government quite a bit and become little more than a confederation of independent nations (in which case the Senate's form is fine), or we need to acknowledge the weaknesses of the Senate and consider ways to work around it. The Harvard Law Review suggestion just seems like a fast track to civil war, so probably is not a wise path, but at least getting the dialogue out there and percolating is something that should be done, and perhaps in a few centuries it will materialize into action.

Yeah, I've never been a fan of upper chambers with territory-based representation since it leads to this kind of issue. The US isn't alone among democratic countries having one, but it seems an extreme case given the powers wielded by it (the Spanish Senate is pretty powerless, for example, and it's best that it remains that way imho).

I think you guys kinda suffer from being early adopters of this whole liberal democracy thing and a lot of your institutions just are not fit for the current world, but alas there's no national consensus for reform. My fear is the necessity of consensus will only present itself after things truly hit shit creek. Hope I'm wrong.

[Admiral Yi]

It's a giant catch 22.  Our problem is the blocking minority, and the only way we can eliminate the problem is with the cooperation of the blocking minority.

[Syt]

On a Federal level in the German legislative, the states' chamber are represented by members of the state governments, between 4 and 6, depending on number of citizens. This tries to strike a balance between making sure smaller states aren't sidelined while also taking into account larger populations in bigger states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesrat_of_Germany#Today

Then again Germany's federal parliament also has a fun mix of first past the post and party lists.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't think the idea of giving historical regions with their own identities some level of representation above and beyond strictly based on population, especially in a confederation/Federal style system is a bad idea--in fact I find it necessary. But I think there needs to be some caveats:

1. You can still weight to population to a degree, like for example the German upper chamber does
2. You can make it so the chamber which represents the States has different, and typically should be weaker, day to day legislative powers than the chamber which represents people. You could even restrict the upper chamber so that it can only delay normal legislation, but its consent is required for legislation that say, alters the fundamental relationship between the states or the Federal government and the states.

In the American system the Senate functionally has identical legislative power to the States, and is ultimately the more important body because it also controls confirmation of appointments to high executive offices and to Article III judgeships.

Also I would note that Germany as we all know was a union of small independent kingdoms each with centuries of history, their own monarchs, legal systems etc, that was only unified in the 19th century. To some degree a confederation/Federal system was the only appropriate path for them. I think for our Thirteen Colonies we were in a similar situation. But a number of states are just largely not logical, like there was no special reason for Wyoming / North Dakota / Montana / South Dakota / Idaho (which collectively have 10% of the Seats in the senate and represent only 1.5% of the country's population. These states are largely just large surveyed land areas that were basically empty at the time they were drawn, acting like these states had some sort of rich history and identity isn't true, at the time each was admitted as a state the vast majority of their residents were not even native born in those states but were transplants from other areas.

[Syt]

2. You can make it so the chamber which represents the States has different, and typically should be weaker, day to day legislative powers than the chamber which represents people. You could even restrict the upper chamber so that it can only delay normal legislation, but its consent is required for legislation that say, alters the fundamental relationship between the states or the Federal government and the states.

This is already the case in Germany. There's laws that require approval by the states' chamber, and some that don't. Rule of thumb is if the constitution is changed or if the law affects state finances or their administrative matters (which is state responsibility and can differ between states and from federal administration) then the states get a say.

Of course that line can be blurry sometimes.

[OttoVonBismarck]

What's interesting is by the numbers I think the Dems may have a long term advantage in the Senate, albeit a narrow one. If you break down the current states into what we could reasonably expect the future to be, so basically a list of not just red and blue states, but states that are actually trending in a certain way (like Georgia, Texas and Arizona are quite clearly and for a number of obvious reasons trending blue, and while the GOP has been ignoring the signs of this in Texas for about 10 years the reality is getting closer every election cycle now)--you get something kinda like this:

D States: AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, HI, IL, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OR, RI, TX, VA, VT, WA = 25
R States: AK, AL, AR, IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, MT, ND, NE, OH, OK, SC, SD, TN, UT, WV, WY = 22
Unsure: FL, PA, WI = 3

Of course the reality is it takes a long time for stuff like this to sort out. For example West Virginia basically went red when it rejected Gore in 2000, but it had been trending culturally red for many years, but it took another decade for Republicans to take control of the State legislature and even longer to take the Governor's mansion. They still have a Democrat Senator who won reelection in 2018. Ohio is a state that also has basically gone red, and shares similar reasons for this with West Virginia--it is a state that has its best days in the rear view mirror, and it is growing older and whiter than the rest of the country largely as a function of low birth rate + educated young people are moving to other places like Texas and the Carolinas with hotter economies, or even further afield to the cities of the coastal "elites." But there's still a Democrat Senator in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who likewise was reelected fairly convincingly in 2018 because he has a strong personal brand and appeal to white working class voters, he will be hard to unseat. The Republicans have several Senators who may be ensconced in States that are blue or turning blue for many years.

But, with partisanship becoming so severe, I do think voters are getting less and less likely to look at Senators as individuals, they are more often now voting on what that Senator represents nationally. That is why Joe Manchin and Sherrod Brown, while they won in 2018, did so with smaller margins than in their previous elections. It's why Susan Collins and Cory Gardner are in bad trouble right now, and why Doug Jones is a dead man walking. People really are voting for control of the national legislature, which is not actually how America voted in a lot of these races for most of our history of electing Senators. I suggest that means over the next 20 years "color mixing" of red and blue states with opposite color Senators will gradually become less common.

But even as you see a slight shift to the Democrats from the state realignments, it likely does not make the country meaningfully more governable, and in fact may make it less so even. The Republicans appear to be far worse as the minority party than the Democrats, and much more willing to do grave damage to the country just to impede basic ability of a person with a (D) beside their name governing.

[Valmy]

What the fuck is he talking about? Since the Conservatives screwed LBJ out of the Chief Justice Appointment in 1968 the Democrats have appointed four total justices since 1968, 52 fucking years. In what way are we used to having our partisans stack the court?

I swear they will just come up with whatever bullshit they can pull out of their ass to justify their actions.