Karl Kurtz has a great article for harcore legislative junkies entitled The Golden Age of State Legislatures over at The Thicket at State Legislatures. He takes a look at the dramatic changes that took place in state legislatures toward the middle and later parts of the 18th century (that’s the 1700s, Holmes.)
A couple of interesting points:
In the years just before Independence, the British clamped down on the colonial assemblies. Parliament suspended the New York Assembly in 1766, and the royal governor did the same in Massachusetts in 1768. Prevented from performing their lawmaking function, colonial assembly members turned instead to building strong constituency ties says University of Virginia historian Peter Onuf. They took a key role in mobilizing popular opinion against the crown.
. . .
The first Pennsylvania constitution was radically democratic: all bills had to be published, and final passage of bills in the unicameral did not occur until a second vote was held by a new legislature following an annual election. This made the people of Pennsylvania, in effect, “a second branch of the legislature,†says Onuf.The unicameral structure soon came under attack for too much concentration of power. Bicameralism was favored as a double representation of the people—one more way to protect their liberty and property rights—and Pennsylvania revised its constitution to add a second chamber and a popularly elected governor. By the end of the 18th century, all of the states had adopted bicameral legislatures, annual elections and popularly elected governors.
I grew up in Nebraska and while in college interned for a legislator in Nebraska’s Unicameral (the only unicameral legislature in the U.S.). Nebraska abandoned its bicameral in favor of one chamber during the 1930’s. The driving force for this change was to save money (yes, in fact, there ARE people who are more frugal than Hoosiers, and most of them live in Nebraska). There is a bit less of a smoke-filled room atmosphere as well, since there are no conference committees, plus the Senate reminded some people of the House of Lords and all that royal stuff across the pond. Populism was the dominant political force in Nebraska at that time and having Senators didn’t rub some people the right way (of course, the one chamber remained the Senate so there are still Senators … go figure).
It seems to me that a bicameral protects rights by slowing down legislative action. People may (rightly) criticize the Indiana and other state legislatures for a pace of “slow…nothing…slow…slow…oops, you blinked and missed it,” but it was amazing to me how fast things could move through the Nebraska Legislature. Having a bill have to go back to the other house for concurrence provides at least a small brake on the process.
Ah, so could the Cornhusker explain for this native Hoosier how that works? I seem to remember that Nebraska’s version of the marriage amendment was passed by the legislature in like March and on the Nov ballot that same year. I’m sure Boz and Brandt wish they were there.
Karen –
You have hit on a big part of the reason our federal government is organized as it is – part of it is a purposeful effort to impede legislation and to force as much compromise and consideration as possible.
Of course, it is usually not stated that baldly…’separation of powers’ sounds so much better!
Idunno:
I think the speed of Nebraska’s amendment was due less to the unicameral/bicameral difference, and more to Indiana having a wiser and slower process for amending our constitution. It’s not just that the amendment has to go through both houses – the amendment must go through both houses TWICE (and by separately elected legislatures at that). As I recall a couple of other bicameral states made marriage amendments (if you want to call them that) very quickly as well – once through their bicameral legislature and then right onto the ballot that November.
Parker:
At first I was going to say that the Unicameral was neither better nor worse at protecting rights than a bicameral, but when I thought about it a moment I realized that was incorrect for the reasons we are discussing here. But like any good thing, it can go too far – as is the case when you have so many elected executive/administrative officials that no one can get anything done and the voters have no idea whom to hold accountable.
Did you see that the NH House recently passed civil union law? That’s a tiny state, but they have like 400 people in their House. I mean geez, isn’t that like one rep for every 1000 people?