Traditions of the United States Senate

Traditions of the United States Senate PDF

Author: United States Senate

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2014-10-23

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9781502942524

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Welcome to the Senate of the United States, the “World's Greatest Deliberative Body.” No one knows for certain who coined that phrase. It came into widespread use in the latter half of the 19th century, and many have questioned its accuracy at various times in the nation's history, but those words are routinely applied to no other legislature than the “upper house” of the United States Congress. Alexis de Tocqueville's influential 1830s survey of American government, published in the early years of the Senate's “Golden Age,” helped to promote that notion. The U.S. Senate relies heavily on tradition and precedent. Change comes slowly. Many of its current rules and procedures date from the First Congress in 1789. The major amendment to the U.S. Constitution affecting Senate operations—the 17th Amendment providing for direct popular election of its members—took 87 years from the time of its initial drafting in 1826 to its ratification in 1913. The decision to make it possible under the Senate rules to limit debate required 128 years of consideration. In conducting late 20th-century Senate impeachment trials, the Senate closely followed procedures established in the 1790s and updated in the 1860s. Senate officials still carry 18th-century titles such as “secretary,” “clerk,” “keeper of the stationery,” and—until recently—“wagon-master.” Traditions of the United States Senate offers a guide to the distinguishing customs and rituals of the institution that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Allen Drury lovingly described as “this lively and appealing body.”

Esteemed Colleagues

Esteemed Colleagues PDF

Author: Burdett A. Loomis

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2004-05-13

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780815798972

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What's happened to the longstanding traditions of civility and decorum within the world's greatest deliberative body? While the Senate hasn't yet become as rancorous as the House, over the past three decades it has grown noticeably less collegial. In Esteemed Colleagues, leading congressional scholars address the extent to which civility has declined in the U.S. Senate, and how that decline has affected our political system. The contributors analyze the relationships between Senators, shaped by high levels of both individualism and partisanship, and how these ties shape the deliberation of issues before the chamber. Civility and deliberation have changed in recent decades, up to and including the Clinton impeachment process, and the book sheds light on both the current American politics and the broad issues of representation, responsiveness, and capacity within our governmental institutions.

Desk 88

Desk 88 PDF

Author: Sherrod Brown

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0374722021

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Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In Desk 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. "Perhaps the most imaginative book to emerge from the Senate since Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts produced Profiles in Courage." —David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Despite their flaws and frequent setbacks, each made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho’s Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. Together, these eight portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the Progressive idea over the past century: in the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public have successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the cause of economic or racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shed their responsibilities to employees and communities, and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But the Progressive idea is not dead. Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and create a new era in which Americans of all backgrounds can know the “Dignity of Work.”

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