Staggered Terms for the US Senate: Origins and Irony

• Published date: 01 August 2015
• Date: 01 August 2015
• Author: Daniel Wirls
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12084

DANIEL WIRLS

University of California, Santa Cruz

Staggered Terms for the US Senate:

Origins and Irony

This article provides the first detailed study of the origins of staggered Senate

terms, which typically have been interpreted as part of the framers’ intent to create an

insulated, stable, and conservative Senate. I draw upon three sources of evidence—the

meaning and application of “rotation” in revolutionary America, the deliberations and

decisions at the Constitutional Convention, and the arguments during Ratification—to

show that the origins of and intentions behind staggered terms offer little support for the

dominant interpretation. Instead, staggered terms, a mechanism to promote “rotation” or

turnover of membership, were added to the Constitution as a compromise to offset, not

augment, the Senate’s longer terms by exposing a legislative chamber with long individ-

ual tenure to more frequent electoral influence and change.

There could be no new Senate. This was the very same body, constitutionally and in

point of law, which hadassembled on the first day of its meeting in 1789. It hasexisted

without any intermission from that dayuntil the present moment and would continue to

exist as long as the Government could endure. It was emphatically a permanentbody.

1

—Senator James Buchanan (1841)

Based on the fact that only one-third of the Senate is up for reelec-

tion every two years, the Senate is said to be, unlike the House, a

continuing or permanent body, to the point where scholars and Senators

have claimed it is the same Senate that f‌irst met in 1789.

2

Staggered

terms—any arrangement of terms of off‌ice so that all members of a body

are not appointed or elected at the same time—are one of the constitu-

tional provisions that distinguish the Senate from the House and are the

foundation for the notion of the Senate as a continuing body. And

yet almost no scholarship exists on the origins and purpose of this feature

of American bicameralism. Instead a conventional wisdom dominates,

one that interprets staggered elections as part of the framers’ intent to

create an insulated, stable, deliberative—and thereby continuing or

permanent—Senate. For example, the authors of a recent history of the

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 3, August 2015 471

DOI: 10.1111 /lsq.12084

V

C2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

Senate claim that the framers “decided that only one-third of the senators

come up for election each two years, further to insulate the Senate from

popular enthusiasms or turmoil” (MacNeil and Baker 2013, 15). Almost

90 years earlier, Lindsay Rogers wrote much the same thing, as have

many others in between.

3

In this way, selection by state legislatures,

six-year terms, and staggered elections are almost always thought of and

portrayed as a harmonious package to create a less democratic upper

house. Staggered terms are an implicit part of every clich

e about the

Senate as the “world’s greatest deliberative body” that “cools the coffee”

brewed by the House.

This interpretation has, however, little basis in the origins of and

intention behind the Senate’s staggered terms. I draw upon three sources

of evidence—the meaning and application of “rotation” in postrevolu-

tionary America, the deliberations and decisions at the Constitutional

Convention, and the arguments during Ratif‌ication—to show that the

conventional wisdom requires substantial revision. Staggered terms

were (1) in the revolutionary era, a mechanism to ensure “rotation,” or

democratic turnover, (2) added to the Constitution as part of a compro-

mise to assuage opponents of an insulated Senate and obtain a majority

in support of a long term for that body, and (3) portrayed during Ratif‌ica-

tion as a form of rotation that counteracted the perceived dangers of the

long term and a Senate aristocracy. Whatever the effects in practice, stag-

gered terms were intended primarily to mitigate the potential dangers of

a legislative body with long individual tenure by exposing it to more

frequent electoral inf‌luence. Consequently, the contribution of this article

is twofold: it is the f‌irst comprehensive historical study of the origins of

staggered Senate terms and a corrective to what has been a frequently

one-dimensional and often inaccurate understanding of how and why

they came to be.

The irony is that staggered elections, a category of rotation

intended to disrupt the accumulation and perpetuation of institutional

power, came to be seen as part and parcel of the Senate’s conserva-

tive purpose and produced the notion of an undying Senate or

continuing body. More generally, seeing staggered terms as a form

of electoral accountability, as a form of rotation, reminds us of the

complexity of the Senate’s creation. The Senate was certainly

intended to be the more conservative or undemocratic of the legisla-

tive chambers, but not every aspect of its construction f‌it that mold.

The combination of long terms and staggered elections evince the

framers’ efforts, with both abstract principles and political necessity

in the mix, to balance stability with responsiveness in the design of

republican institutions.

472 Daniel Wirls