The Senate Has Surrendered Its Constitutional Responsibilities
United States Senate Building, Washington D.C.
Edward B. Foley argues that “If Senators were elected using Condorcet-based voting methods, they would be able to perform their constitutional duty to thwart presidential despotism.”
The Constitution’s two fundamental goals are, as Madison articulated them in The Federalist Papers, first, the promotion of government in the general public interest (rather than to the advantage of any partial private purpose) and, second, the prevention of tyranny at the hands of a despotic regime that has usurped power to pursue its authoritarian oppression.1 The Madisonian means that the Constitution employs to attain these two goals is its institutional architecture of separated powers and federated government, so that the coercive authority of government is dispersed and quests for control can be checked and balanced by competing quests. In Madison’s most memorable phrasing of this principle, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
