DANIEL WIRLSUniversity 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 Senateterms, which typically have been interpreted as part of the framers’ intent to create aninsulated, stable, and conservative Senate. I draw upon three sources of evidence—themeaning and application of “rotation” in revolutionary America, the deliberations anddecisions at the Constitutional Convention, and the arguments during Ratification—toshow that the origins of and intentions behind staggered terms offer little support for thedominant interpretation. Instead, staggered terms, a mechanism to promote “rotation” orturnover of membership, were added to the Constitution as a compromise to offset, notaugment, 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 inpoint of law, which had assembled on the first day of its meeting in 1789. It has existedwithout any intermission from that day until the present moment and would continue toexist as long as the Government could endure. It was emphatically a permanent body.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, acontinuing or permanent body, to the point where scholars and Senatorshave claimed it is the same Senate that first met in 1789.2 Staggeredterms—any arrangement of terms of office so that all members of a bodyare not appointed or elected at the same time—are one of the constitu-tional provisions that distinguish the Senate from the House and are thefoundation for the notion of the Senate as a continuing body. Andyet almost no scholarship exists on the origins and purpose of this featureof American bicameralism. Instead a conventional wisdom dominates,one that interprets staggered elections as part of the framers’ intent tocreate an insulated, stable, deliberative—and thereby continuing orpermanent—Senate. For example, the authors of a recent history of the

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 40, 3, August 2015 471DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12084VC 2015 The Comparative Legislative Research Center of The University of Iowa

Senate claim that the framers “decided that only one-third of the senatorscome up for election each two years, further to insulate the Senate frompopular enthusiasms or turmoil” (MacNeil and Baker 2013, 15). Almost90 years earlier, Lindsay Rogers wrote much the same thing, as havemany others in between.3 In this way, selection by state legislatures,six-year terms, and staggered elections are almost always thought of andportrayed as a harmonious package to create a less democratic upperhouse. Staggered terms are an implicit part of every clich�e about theSenate 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 andintention behind the Senate’s staggered terms. I draw upon three sourcesof evidence—the meaning and application of “rotation” in postrevolu-tionary America, the deliberations and decisions at the ConstitutionalConvention, and the arguments during Ratification—to show that theconventional wisdom requires substantial revision. Staggered termswere (1) in the revolutionary era, a mechanism to ensure “rotation,” ordemocratic turnover, (2) added to the Constitution as part of a compro-mise to assuage opponents of an insulated Senate and obtain a majorityin 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 thelong term and a Senate aristocracy. Whatever the effects in practice, stag-gered terms were intended primarily to mitigate the potential dangers ofa legislative body with long individual tenure by exposing it to morefrequent electoral influence. Consequently, the contribution of this articleis twofold: it is the first comprehensive historical study of the origins ofstaggered Senate terms and a corrective to what has been a frequentlyone-dimensional and often inaccurate understanding of how and whythey came to be.

The irony is that staggered elections, a category of rotationintended to disrupt the accumulation and perpetuation of institutionalpower, came to be seen as part and parcel of the Senate’s conserva-tive purpose and produced the notion of an undying Senate orcontinuing body. More generally, seeing staggered terms as a formof electoral accountability, as a form of rotation, reminds us of thecomplexity of the Senate’s creation. The Senate was certainlyintended 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 theframers’ efforts, with both abstract principles and political necessityin the mix, to balance stability with responsiveness in the design ofrepublican institutions.

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Staggered Terms and the US Senate

The structure and composition of the Senate was the most conten-tious matter debated and resolved at the Constitutional Convention(Swift 1996, 9; Wirls and Wirls 2004). And staggered Senate terms areon any list of the decisions of 1787 that made the Senate the Senate.Even so, despite the volume of scholarship on the Convention and thecreation of the Senate, the origins and adoption of staggered termshave not been explored in any depth or with any rigor and are not evenmentioned in many cases of relevant scholarship.4

This is not simply of historical interest. Staggered terms remain animportant factor in the relative outcomes of House and Senate elections,even as the actual history of incumbency, turnover, and party control ineach chamber complicates the impression of a volatile House and stableSenate.5 For example, in the twentieth century the average Senateincumbent came to be more vulnerable than the average House incum-bent, with some elections featuring greater change in the Senate than inthe House, but the potential impact of any election on the overall mem-bership of the institution is always smaller in the former than the latter.As well, the effect of the different electoral cycles on the behavior ofRepresentatives versus Senators has been the subject of investigation(e.g., Ahuja 1994; Fenno 1982; Shepsle et al. 2009). Staggered terms area feature of most state senates and some upper houses in other nations.6

And, as noted at the outset, they are the basis for the idea of the Senateas a continuing body, a doctrine that has received renewed attention anddiscussion because of its relationship to recent struggles over the Senatefilibuster involving the “nuclear” or “constitutional” option for gettingaround supermajority cloture (Binder, Madonna, Smith 2007; Bruhl2010; Gold and Gupta 2004).7 These struggles culminated in the historicactions of the 113th Senate, which used a simple majority to amendSenate practice and, in place of a three-fifths supermajority, allow debateto be closed on most presidential nominations by a majority vote.

Despite or because of the dearth of scholarship, staggered terms forthe Senate are most often interpreted in a particular fashion by historians,political scientists, and journalists alike, in a matter of fact manner thatdraws upon assumption more than evidence. For example, “By requiringonly one-third of the Senate to seek reelection every two years,” accord-ing to one congressional scholar, “the framers hoped that short-termfluctuations in public opinion would be leveled out in the Senate, allow-ing only enduring shifts in sentiment to take hold” (Stewart 1992, 69).Robert Caro, in perhaps the best-selling book on the Senate, writes that“the Framers armored the Senate against the people,” and on top of state

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selection and long terms, staggered elections “would be an additional,even stronger, layer of armor” (2003, 9–10). My work on the creation ofthe Senate is another example (Wirls and Wirls 2004, 210). ProminentAmerican politics textbooks interpret staggered terms as “intended tomake that body even more resistant to popular pressure” and part ofwhat insulates the Senate “from momentary shifts in the public mood”(Kernell and Jacobson 2000, 164; Lowi and Ginsberg 1990, 49). Ingeneral, there is an ahistorical quality to many of the assertions regardingthe Convention’s use of staggered elections as if they emerged ex nihiloin Philadelphia as “the solution” to the problem of complete turnover ofthe Senate (e.g., Barbash 1987, 135) instead of seeing staggered terms asa familiar practice from state constitutions that might have had a differentor more complicated function.8

As we will see, my argument is not that these and other similarcharacterizations are wrong in their implications about the potentialeffects of the combination of long and staggered terms. The historicalanalysis will show that they are misleading and inaccurate as far as theprimary intentions and political interests that led to the addition to theConstitution of staggered terms for the Senate.

The Central Question and Analytic Approach

The dominance of this line of interpretation despite the absence ofevidence begs the central question: Where, then, did staggered termscome from, and why were they added in this specific way to the Consti-tution? To answer this question, this work undertakes a three-parthistorical analysis of the uses of and intentions behind staggeredelections in the periods before, during, and after the ConstitutionalConvention. As just noted, one of the shortcomings of much of the inter-pretation of staggered Senate terms is the lack of any history prior to theConvention. Instead, I examine the first state constitutions and othercontemporaneous writings, along with the secondary literature on revo-lutionary constitutionalism, to show how staggered elections were usedand interpreted in the years before the Convention. I then examine therecords of the Constitutional Convention and in particular isolate the trailof votes related to Senate terms and pinpoint the emergence of theopposing and shifting coalitions, favoring longer and shorter Senateterms, that were pivotal to establishing staggered elections. Tracing theevolution of the votes and the range of related provisions supported andopposed by the states—something not done in previous scholarship—reveals both the politics of compromise and intentions behind the addi-tion of staggered terms. Finally, and within the familiar limitations of the

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strategic arguments often mustered at this time, I use the debates andpublications during Ratification, including a search for all referencesto the Senate’s form of term rotation, to see how both proponentsand opponents of the proposed Constitution portrayed this feature ofthe Senate.

The Use and Purpose of Staggered Termsin the Late Eighteenth Century

In the years leading to the Constitutional Convention, includingthe wave of state constitutions written in the 1770s and 1780s, staggeredterms—the phrase was not used in this period—were one of a set ofmechanisms used to create what was called “rotation.” In discussions ofthe tenure of any governmental office, the term “rotation” was invokedwith some regularity to refer to the frequency with which the member-ship of an institution would be subject to change in whole or in part.“Rotation” was about devices that ensured regular turnover in office-holders and encompassed two approaches: (1) provisions that limited re-eligibility for office; that is, forms of what we now call term limits; and(2) provisions that staggered the terms of membership in legislatures orother governmental bodies by dividing the membership into groups orclasses to be selected in different years.9

In his 1776 “Thoughts on Government,” John Adams endorsedrotation, in the form of term limits, but annual terms held a higher status,“there not being in the whole circle of the sciences, a maxim more infal-lible than this, ‘Where annual elections end, there slavery begins’”(Adams 1983, 406). Annual elections, the paramount mechanism ofdemocratic accountability in the revolutionary era, were frequentlypaired with eligibility rotation as a powerful check on governmentalpower. For example, the Articles of Confederation restricted delegates toCongress to serving no more than three years of any period of six, inaddition to annual terms. In combination, short terms and reeligibilityrestrictions had an additive effect to ensure rotation. Unlike limits onreeligibility, rotation in the form of staggered elections could be appliedonly to chambers with terms greater than one year, and even going intothe summer of 1787, annual elections were still the norm. Along withthe Congress of the Confederation, 10 states had annual elections fortheir lower house. Two, Connecticut and Rhode Island, held electionsevery six months for theirs. Only South Carolina had two-year terms forits general assembly.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary and founding era saw an attenua-tion in the vise grip of annual elections. Essayists espoused the merits of

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longer terms for at least one chamber in a republican system. Even manychampions of annual elections for the lower house acknowledged thevirtue of balancing the kind of electoral check one-year terms repre-sented with the accumulation of wisdom and experience and at leastlimited insulation from popular pressure. In the colonial era, most upperhouses were councils—some with indefinite appointments—that com-bined executive and legislative functions. Several of the new stateconstitutions created upper houses that were more democratic in theirselection, more clearly separated from the executive, and with longerterms than the other chamber (Adams 1980; Kruman 1997; Main 1967).Four states created a senate or legislative council with longer terms ofthree (Delaware), four (New York and Virginia), and five (Maryland)years. South Carolina stipulated two-year terms for both legislativebodies. Four new constitutions had one-year terms for their upper cham-bers (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and North Carolina).Connecticut and Rhode Island continued under their existing charterswith one year for the upper chamber and six months for the assembly.Two states, Pennsylvania and Georgia, were unicameral.

The longer terms of New York, Delaware, and Virginia were stag-gered with New York and Virginia having one-fourth go out each yearand one-third going out annually in Delaware’s council. The innovationof legislative senates with longer terms was tied to rotation in every caseexcept Maryland, which also featured a system of electors to pick its sen-ate.10 The scholarship on state constitutions does not spend much timeon staggered elections for the new senates, but several historians quicklynote or imply that upper-chamber rotation was to enforce turnover andelectoral accountability (Adams 1980; Kruman 1997; Main 1967). Per-haps it was self-evident given the context. With the lower house ofnearly every state elected for one year, no rotation was required. Thisimplies quite directly that these state constitutions, aside from Maryland,were trying to combine a longer term in the upper house with turnoverand the electoral check. The virtue of a longer term for some positionscould be balanced by rotation in the form of staggered elections. Virginiais a good example. Several proposals for an upper house or senate werefloated going into the 1776 convention, and they included terms of life,seven years without rotation, and one year (Sutton 1989, 37–42). GeorgeMason, in many respects the father of the Virginia Constitution, pro-posed the prevailing plan: a lower house with annual terms and a four-year senate term with annual rotation. In his original proposal, Masonincluded term limits as well, but that did not make it into the final docu-ment (Mason 1970, 295–304).11 The constitution also included ageneral declaration for frequent elections and rotation (Constitution of

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Virginia, 1776). All this points to staggered terms as a resolution ofthe tension between annual elections and longer terms for the secondchamber (see also, Main 1967, 125). In this way length of term andstaggered-term rotation could be compensatory rather than additive.

Two other state constitutions provide contextual evidence for stag-gered terms as a form of rotation. It is instructive, if surprising, to startwith unicameral Pennsylvania. The 1776 constitution created a one-chamber legislature with annual terms and restrictions on reeligibility,instituting a form of strict democratic rotation. This was not balanced bya second legislative chamber with longer and perhaps staggered terms.Nor was there a separate position of governor. Instead, Pennsylvania hada plural executive, the “supreme executive council” of 12 members,consisting of one “counselor” elected from the city of Philadelphia andeach of the 11 counties. Each counselor served three years with one-third going out each year. One does not generally see the rationales forconstitutional provisions stated in the document, but in this case Penn-sylvania put the justification for its form of staggered elections intowords. “By this mode of election and continual rotation,” the charterexplained, “more men will be trained to public business, there will inevery subsequent year be found in the council a number of personsacquainted with the proceedings of the foregoing years, whereby thebusiness will be more consistently conducted, and moreover the dangerof establishing an inconvenient aristocracy will be effectually prevented”(Constitution of Pennsylvania, 1776).

This application of rotation—in the executive branch—combineda long tenure with staggered elections to balance the virtues of experi-ence and consistency with a check on potential institutional corruption;the preservation of practical wisdom was paired harmoniously with dem-ocratic turnover. This notion of executive-centered practical wisdom willsurface at the Constitutional Convention. As we will see, the only com-ment at the Convention that directly relates stability or wisdom to thestaggered term echoes the rationale in the Pennsylvania Constitution byemphasizing the Senate’s shared duties with the executive.

Unlike Pennsylvania, Delaware effected a transition to a bicamerallegislature with staggered terms for its upper house. Even if it did notstate the rationale directly, Delaware’s constitution revealed the purposeof legislative staggered terms. The 1776 constitution created a“Legislative Council” composed of three councilors elected from eachof the three counties that comprised Delaware. These nine councilorsserved three-year terms, but one councilor from each county would berotated out each year (Constitution of Delaware, 1776). Given that thelower house, the Assembly, was elected to annual terms and even the

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executive privy council had two-year terms with rotation and limits onreeligibility, it is difficult to see the rotation in the Legislative Council asanything but that, especially as it was rotation within each county’sgroup of three councilors. The counties would not forego an annualinfluence on the nature and direction of their representation in the upperhouse.

Rotation and the Senate at the Constitutional Convention

Given this backdrop of recently formed and tested state charters,the delegates to the Convention were familiar with staggered terms asa form of rotation for offices with longer terms. Its ultimate applica-tion to the proposed national senate, therefore, is not surprising, butneither was it automatic. It is well understood by constitutional histor-ians that the records of the debates are fragmentary, and manyfeatures of the Convention’s work are ambiguous.12 Nevertheless, theevidence about staggered elections runs strongly against the conven-tional wisdom. Just as with the Convention’s deliberations moregenerally, many delegates were learning and adjusting their positionsas things progressed. Even so, along with some concern for continuityof experience as a practical good, staggered elections were about elec-toral accountability. When the delegates added staggered terms, theydid so as part of a compromise to balance the longest senate termattainable with a form of rotation.

The Constitutional Convention opened with consideration of theso-called Virginia Plan or Randolph Resolutions, which were largely thework of James Madison. The resolutions did not specify the length ofterm for either the “first branch” or “second branch” of the national legis-lature, leaving in each case a blank to be filled. Unlike the first branch,however, the members of the second branch were “to hold their officesfor a term sufficient to ensure their independency” (RFC, I: 20). Thisphrase—though ultimately discarded—would come to reflect that factthat many delegates, not just Madison and his fellow Virginians, broughtto the table strong preferences for an upper house with long, evenlife-long, terms.

Madison was the foremost advocate for an independent and stablesenate, one characterized by experience, knowledge, detachment, andelevated selection. If staggered elections had been part of a plan for aug-menting the continuity or detachment of the second branch, it isprobable that Madison would have included such a provision in theVirginia Plans, especially given that Virginia’s state senate had a

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four-year term with one-quarter going out every year. Madison was,however, an avowed proponent of the Maryland Senate with its term offive years—the longest of any state—and no rotation.13

Only two weeks into the proceedings, the Convention delegatesfirst considered the periods of service for both chambers. This takesplace before the delegates get bogged down in the debates over equaland proportional representation and the interests of small and largestates, but it follows the unanimous decision on June 7 in favor of selec-tion of senators by state legislatures. On June 12, long terms for bothchambers won decisive initial victories, with three-year terms for theHouse prevailing 7–4 and seven years for the Senate by 8–1–2, with nomention of any type of rotation. Three and seven years were likelyinspired by British practice. A few delegates make reference, mostlynegative, to the “Septennial Act” of 1716 that changed the maximumparliamentary term from three to seven years (Lease 1950). But it is sug-gestive that the abandoned shorter parliamentary term was embraced bythe delegates as appropriate for the new people’s chamber and that thelonger term, which was promoted in 1716 in part to create a more stableand responsible government, was embraced as appropriate for theproposed Senate (RFC, I: 214–19).

The first proposal for rotation, of any kind, did not come until sev-eral days later, and it was for the House, not the Senate. On June 21when the delegates reconsidered the House term, some pushed for ashorter tenure, citing in some cases the annual elections that were stillcommon at the state level. Others, including Madison, argued that thetime for travel to and from the distant states to the capital made one-yearterms impractical. Two years was proposed as a middle path. Inresponse, Delaware’s John Dickinson favored the three-year House termagreed to earlier but argued against, according to Madison, the“inconveniency of an entire change of the whole number at the samemoment” and “suggested a rotation, by an annual election of one third”(RFC, I: 360–61).14 The notes taken by Robert Yates record Dickinsonsomewhat differently: “I propose that the word three shall remain[instead of the proposed two], but that they shall be removable annuallyin classes” (RFC, I: 365). While his words are somewhat ambiguous,Dickinson’s suggestion, given its context, makes sense as a way toassuage concerns about longer House terms. This interpretation is rein-forced by the form of rotation, discussed earlier, for the “LegislativeCouncil” in Dickinson’s state of Delaware: three councilors from eachcounty elected to three-year terms, with one councilor from each up forelection annually, to ensure that each county would be able to refresh orupdate its representation on an annual basis.15

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It bears repeating that the first recorded mention of staggered termsis in a proposal for the lower chamber and in the spirit of the usual mean-ing and purpose of rotation. Aside from Dickinson’s proposal, thedebate about House tenure was about length of term, not rotation. In aclear splitting-of-the-difference, three years was struck by a decisivevote in favor of two years, which presumably did not require any rotationbut was long enough to be practical given the distances representativeswould have to travel (RFC, I: 360–62).

The final decision on Senate terms was more difficult andprotracted. Despite the initial agreement by the 8–1–2 vote, many dele-gates had concerns that seven years was too long. By this point in thedeliberations, the delegates had been struggling for days with the centralquestion of representation—that is, whether the Senate would be propor-tional like the House or based on state equality. The rancor and distrustover the representation question, which would not be resolved untilmid-July, might have affected consideration of senate terms or rotationbut not in a straightforward fashion. The various purposes of the Senatewere still being determined and debated, and conflicting views on thesecut across the nascent schism between small and large states on appor-tionment per se. The only major structural decision so far reached aboutthe Senate was state selection. Small-state representatives were holdingout hope for equality in the upper house, and some among them thoughtlong terms might detract from state control of senators while others likedthe independence a long term would afford, as we shall see. Some of thestrongest and most consistent supporters of long senate terms werelarge-state delegates, but they were hardly unanimous. For example,South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney, a large-state supporter of propor-tional senate representation, also worried about senators getting fixed inthe new capital and thought this a threat to the more distant states such ashis (RFC, I: 409).

When the delegates returned to the question of senate terms onJune 25, a few days after having reduced the House term to two years, aproposal was made by Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts for fouryears instead of seven with “1/4 to be elected every year.”16 This wascountered by a proposal for seven years “to go out in fixed proportions.”Six years was then suggested as more convenient for rotation. But thedelegates did not vote to add staggered terms at this point. They took thefirst step of striking seven years by a 7–3–1 vote. Long terms continuedto do poorly with six and five years falling short on the same 5–5–1votes (Table 1) (RFC, I: 396, 415–16).17

The next day, Gorham, the same delegate who had started thingsoff the day before with the proposal for four years with rotation, tried to

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end the gridlock by proposing six years but with the additional provisionof “one third of the members to go out every second year.” Delaware’sGeorge Read, who still favored life appointments, countered with nineyears and one-third rotation. After some debate nine years with rotationlost 8–3 but six years with rotation won 7–4 (RFC, I: 421–26).18 Giventhe earlier opposition to six and even five years, it is clear that rotationhelped seal the deal, and rotation was about change not continuation. Itwas a way to temper long terms with fresh blood.

A closer examination of the patterns of voting on term length androtation strongly suggests that rotation alleviated concerns, whetherideological or political, of some delegates about a longer term and madeit possible for them to swing the votes of key states. With the statesarrayed by the consistency of their support for long or short terms, threegroups emerge (Table 1). Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia equalone another in support for long terms in each of the six votes and formthe long-term coalition. On the other end of the spectrum, New Jersey,South Carolina, Georgia, and New York match each other in oppositionto longer terms and form the short-term coalition. In the middle are thebalancers, with North Carolina and Connecticut all but part of the long-term coalition, and Massachusetts and Maryland providing the crucial

TABLE 1Votes on Senate Term Length and Rotation

at the Constitutional Convention

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swing votes on the 26th. Notice that on June 25, North Carolina andConnecticut voted for six and five-year terms (with rotation having beensuggested at different times, but not as yet included in the motions), butMassachusetts (in the negative) and Maryland (divided) failed to supporteither. Only when six years with rotation was proposed did the two latterstates add their support and turn a 5–5–1 deadlock for six years withoutrotation into a 7–4 victory for six years with staggered terms.

Much as the evidence is a bit thin for the key roles played by Mas-sachusetts and North Carolina a few weeks later in the much-studiedGreat Compromise vote of July 16 (Wirls and Wirls 2004, 97–102), thereasons behind the pivotal behavior of the delegations from Massachu-setts and Maryland on this preceding compromise must be inferred fromthe series of votes and limited evidence from the debates themselves.

During much of the Convention, including the entire period rele-vant to the decisions on Senate terms, Maryland was represented by onlytwo delegates, the long-winded Luther Martin and the reticent Daniel ofSt. Thomas Jenifer. By his votes Jenifer was a nationalist; Martin, inwords and votes, was an opponent of centralization. The result was themost divided delegation during these core weeks of the deliberations.As noted, Maryland was the state with the model senate (at least forMadison and a number of other delegates) due to its five-year terms andindirect mode of election. The only comment recorded by a Marylanderduring the debates on the length and rotation of House and Senate termsis brief and about the House. Jenifer supported the three-year Houseterm, “observing that the too great frequency of elections rendered thepeople indifferent to them, and made the best men unwilling to engagein so precarious a service” (RFC, I: 214, 220).19 The Maryland delega-tion voted in the majority for the three-year House term; and nine dayslater is one of only three states against switching from three years to twofor the House. Jenifer and Martin also cast Maryland’s vote for a seven-year senate term on June 12. But they then divided on striking sevenyears on the 25th, and on the same day divided on six and five yearswithout rotation (Table 1). Maryland reunited to oppose nine years withrotation, and then supported six years with rotation. Given what musthave been Jenifer’s support for and Martin’s opposition to long terms onnearly every vote (following the initial agreement on seven years), itseems quite possible that Jenifer voted against nine years with rotationwith the knowledge that in turn Martin, who had opposed six and fiveyears, would support six with rotation. One of the other Maryland dele-gates, James McHenry, who was absent from June 1 to August 6 butwas most likely apprised by his colleagues of the actions, offered the fol-lowing observation to Maryland legislators soon after the Convention:

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“The Classing the Senate so as to produce the proposed change wasestablished by the Convention on the principle that a rotation of power isessential to Liberty” (RFC, III: 147).

The Massachusetts delegation left a few more fingerprints.Elbridge Gerry, among the more recorded delegates, spoke twice onJune 12 to argue in reference to the House that the people of New Eng-land, at least, would never part with annual terms. Gerry “consideredannual elections as the only defence of the people agst. tyranny. He wasas much agst. a triennial House as agst. a hereditary Executive” (RFC, I:214–15 and 220–21). That same day, the delegation was on the losingside of the 7–4 vote for a three-year house term and divided on the 8–1–2 vote for a seven-year senate term, with Madison recording King andGorham as supporting and Gerry and Strong in the negative (RFC, I:213, 219). As noted above, on June 25 Gorham proposed four yearswith one-fourth annual rotation as a substitute for the seven-year termagreed on earlier and on which Massachusetts divided (RFC, I: 408,415). On June 26 as the Convention closed in on a final decision,Gorham began the debate by reminding his colleagues that “My motionfor 4 years’ continuance, was not put yesterday.” He continued, “I amstill of opinion that classes will be necessary, but I would alter the time”and “moved to fill the blank with ‘six years,’ one third of the members togo out every second year” (RFC, I: 430, 421). Not long into the samediscussion, Gerry offered a bit of room to maneuver: “He admitted theevils arising from a frequency of elections: and would agree to give theSenate a duration of four or five years. A longer term would defeatitself. It never would be adopted by the people” (RFC, I: 425, 432). Theevidence strongly suggests that Gorham was helping to forge a solutionthat Gerry and Strong could support to unite the delegation.

More generally, while the records provide extensive debate aboutthe purpose and merits of a long senate term, only a few comments con-vey an explicit rationale for rotation. With one exception they are aboutbalancing a long term with electoral accountability. For example, Read,who noted that he would “still prefer ‘during good behaviour,’ but beinglittle supported in that idea, he was willing to take the longest term thatcould be obtained,” instead proposed nine years with triennial rotation(RFC, I: 421). Given that he favored life appointments to the Senate, hisinclusion of rotation was a recognition of the political need to offset longterms with refreshment and change.

At the other end of the spectrum, Roger Sherman sought the short-est term feasible and argued that “the two objects of this body arepermanency and safety to those who are to be governed. A bad govern-ment is the worse for being long. Frequent elections give security and

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even permanency. In Connecticut we have existed 132 years under anannual government; and as long as a man behaves himself well, he isnever turned out of office. Four years to the senate is quite sufficientwhen you add to it the rotation proposed” (RFC, I: 431–32). Shermancontrasted the “permanency” of four-year terms (versus his state’sannual elections) against the turnover provided by rotation.

In the last recorded speech before the final votes on Senate termlength, Pennsylvanian James Wilson showed how rotation was more ofa compromise than vital principle. Wilson cited the importance of somepermanence or stability in the government for treaties and diplomacy(indeed a Senate with a long term might even be a match for a foreignmonarch). “The popular objection agst. appointing any public body for along term was that it might by gradual encroachments prolong itself firstinto a body for life, and finally become a hereditary one. It would be asatisfactory answer to this objection that as 1/3 would go out triennially,there would be always three divisions holding their places for unequalterms, and consequently acting under the influence of different views,and different impulses” (RFC, I: 426, 432–33).

The one direct reference to rotation as a way to stabilize Senatemembership came from Edmund Randolph, who just after Gorham’sproposal for four-year terms with one-quarter rotation, “supported theidea of rotation, as favorable to the wisdom and stability of the Corps.hwhich might possibly be always sitting, and aiding the executivei”(RFC, I: 408).20 Randolph’s comment invoked the Senate’s as yet unde-fined but anticipated relationship with the executive particularly inforeign affairs and the business of treaties. In this way, his comment ech-oed the provisions and rationale for rotation in the Pennsylvania “supremecouncil,” cited earlier, which was the executive branch in that state.

Even with Randolph’s invocation of wisdom and stability, theirdeliberations and actions show that the framers primarily viewed andused senate rotation as a tool for fostering electoral accountabilityrather than institutional autonomy or insulation in the antidemocraticsense. Staggered terms became part of a compromise, a means to anend, a way to balance the merits of long terms against the threat ofpermanency. In short, one side, the staunch advocates of a republicanSenate, got as long a term as possible, and some who feared anentrenched aristocracy or needed some degree of compensation orpolitical cover, got this form of rotation. Within this context, and withthe Senate’s powers and duties still to be determined, the kind of con-tinuity of experience and knowledge that staggered elections wouldfacilitate appealed to some delegates and added another argument infavor of the compromise.21

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Staggered Terms in the Ratification Debates

The structure and powers of the Senate were significant controver-sies during Ratification, including the six-year term, which manyconventioneers and commentators felt was too long. Staggered electionsfor the Senate were less of a topic, but evidence from the various debatesduring Ratification, treated with appropriate caution, underscores that itsmain purpose was to offset the concerns that attended long terms.

Annual elections and rotation were important principles in the cri-tiques of the proposed Constitution. Madison opened Federalist #53with the “proverbial” observation that “where annual elections end, tyr-anny begins,” before he proceeded to argue that its wisdom can beoverextended and misapplied (HJM, 359). Madison was compelled tomake this argument because many opponents of the proposed Constitu-tion thought two years was too long a term for Representatives. Somecritics still favored the provision in Article V of the Confederation thatcombined annual terms for delegates to Congress with the additionalrestriction of serving no more than three years of any period of six.

During Ratification, rotation was hailed as “that noble prerogativeof liberty” (Bailyn, 1993, I: 99–100), and its absence from the Constitu-tion much lamented. Many antifederalists thought that senators shouldbe subject both to recall and to their version of “rotation,” by which theymeant term limits. The general lack of rotation—especially in the formof term limitations—was lamented by many, especially in reference tothe executive and Senate, but also the House (ED, I: 56, 99–100, 211,479, 897; Bailyn 1993 II: 292, 559, 790, 804). It is worth noting that asthere was no rotation (as in term limits) provision for the House, thedifference provided by staggered senate terms was one of degree notkind. The framers and both sides in the ratification debates clearlyexpected some degree of continuity in House membership too. After all,there would be no reason for antifederalists to be worried about the lackof term limit “rotation” for the House if they expected a wholesalechange in membership every two years.

Such was antifederalist fear of a detached Senate aristocracy thatstaggered elections might not have been assuasive. A delegate to theMassachusetts convention referred to staggered senate terms as “but ashadow of rotation” (ED, II: 48). Brutus, the premier antifederalist essay-ist, referred to the Senate’s staggered terms as a form of rotation, butcondemned the absence of eligibility rotation and called for a reductionto a four-year term (DHRC, V: 66–67). Indeed, the length of House andSenate terms were among the more frequent criticisms of the proposedconstitution, with antifederalists often suggesting one-year and four-year

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terms instead (Maier 2011; Main 1961). Even if some thought it aninsufficient form of rotation, antifederalists neither criticized nor soughtto repeal the provision for staggered terms.

In turn, advocates of ratification invoked staggered terms as apowerful check on a permanent or insulated Senate, on senators whomight, in the words of Brutus, “forget the hand that formed them” andignore their state’s interests (DHRC, V: 67). Many proratification dele-gates argued against term limits, the other form of rotation, and againstrecall, but staggered terms for the Senate were a different and necessarytype of rotation. A search of the debates at the state conventionsproduced 17 such endorsements of staggered terms by a total of 11proponents of ratification.22 All the references characterize staggeredterms as a safeguard against a “perpetual” senate, a senate aristocracy.Subjecting one-third of the Senate to election every two years wouldkeep senators attentive to their states and bring in new sentiments aboutgovernment and policy.

In Massachusetts, Fisher Ames called senate rotation a “very effec-tual check upon the power of the Senate” (ED, II: 246). North CarolinaFederalist James Iredell argued that the newly elected one-third “willbring with them from the immediate body of the people a sufficientportion of patriotism and independence” to thwart any dangerousalliance between the executive and the Senate (Bailyn 1993, I: 367). “Byconstructing the senate upon rotative principles,” said Charles Cotes-worth Pinckney to his fellow South Carolinians, “we have removed . . .all danger of an aristocratic influence,” while allowing the long term ofsix years to provide the “advantages of an aristocracy” including wisdomand experience (Bailyn 1993, II: 588–89). By the combination of sixyears with one-third rotation, in the words of James Wilson echoing hisreasoning at the Convention, we “secure the benefit of experience,while . . . we avoid the inconveniences that arise from a long anddetached establishment. This body is periodically renovated from thepeople, like a tree, which at the proper season, receives its nourishmentfrom its parent earth” (ED, II: 524).

The Federalist—despite its length and detail—mentions senaterotation in only four sentences, one in each of four different papers. Thefirst two references have no direct bearing on the value or purpose ofrotation (HJM, 401, 414). The third is a comparison between the pro-posed national senate and the senate of Maryland, whose members wereelected for five years and “not under the control of any such rotation asis provided for the federal Senate” (HJM, 429). Moreover, the thrust ofnumbers 62 and 63, the famous papers on the Senate, is about the needfor the kind of responsibility provided by a second legislative chamber

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with longer terms. Both papers are brutally honest in their antidemocraticarguments that a well-constructed senate is a “defense to the peopleagainst their own temporary errors and delusions.” Had the continuityprovided by staggered elections been a factor in Publius’ forthright argu-ment for the qualities a properly constructed senate was to provide—“sufficient permanency,” “national character,” “due acquaintance withthe objects and principles of legislation,” and so forth—he likely wouldhave deployed it for his purposes (HJM, 415–31).

In the final instance, in the paper on the Senate’s special role in for-eign affairs through the treaty approval process, Publius (in this case,John Jay) links staggered terms to continuity of membership as anasset for a certain type of policymaking linked to the Senate’s executivefunctions. He begins by extolling the longer term as the fundamentalmeans to this end. “The duration prescribed,” argues Publius, “is such aswill give them an opportunity of greatly extending their political infor-mation and of rendering their accumulating experience more and morebeneficial to their country.” “Nor has the convention,” he continues,“discovered less prudence in providing for the frequent elections ofsenators in such a way, as to obviate the inconvenience of periodicallytransferring those great affairs entirely to new men, for by leaving aconsiderable residue of the old ones in place, uniformity and order, aswell as a constant succession of official information, will be preserved”(HJM, 434). Jay’s is the last of three statements—one from each of thethree periods—that relates staggered terms to the continuity of practicalwisdom, especially for powers shared with or related to the executivebranch.

Another voice of Publius, Alexander Hamilton, arguing at theNew York convention against the proposal for limits on Senate terms,had no qualms about defending a long term, detailing the vices of toofrequent elections, and endorsing a staggered Senate as a powerfulinstrument for change and renewal:

[T]here will not only be a constant and frequent change of members, but there will besome whose office is near the point of expiration, and who, from this circumstance, willhave a lively sense of their dependence . . . . When two principles are equally important,we ought, if possible, to reconcile them, and sacrifice neither. We think that safety andpermanency in this government are completely reconcilable (ED, II: 318–19).

Hamilton was not being deceptive or strategic in his remarks. Theman who, at the center of his major speech at the Convention, proposedlife terms for senators likely would not have thought of staggered termsas a way to increase senate “permanency.” Instead, as he put it, twoequally important principles—the safety of electoral accountability and

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the detached judgment and experience provided by “permanency”—could be harmonized by balancing long terms with rotation.23

Staggered Terms and the Senate as a Continuing Body

Given the origins of Senate staggered elections, how and when didthe idea of staggered elections as a form of rotation dissipate to bereplaced by and large with an interpretation that conflated them withSenate insulation and detachment? That remains uncertain. After ratifica-tion, some famous commentators continued to see staggered terms asrotation. In 1803, St. George Tucker pointed out that two-year rotationallows for “partial change” in contrast to the dangers of the Senate’slong term, which was “favorable to every stride it may be disposedto make towards extending its own power and influence in thegovernment” (Blackstone 1803, book 1, 196). As late as 1833, JosephStory in his famous constitutional commentaries deemed the provisionfor staggered terms in the Senate “a clause which, without impairing theefficiency of the Senate for the discharge of its high functions, graduallychanges its members and introduces a biennial appeal to the States whichmust forever prohibit any permanent combination for sinister purposes”(Story, n.d., sections 709–12, 724).

Nevertheless, at some point during these years—and the when andhow are a bit of a mystery—senators began developing and applying thedoctrine of the Senate as a continuing body. As indicated by the openingquotation from Senator Buchanan, this goes back to at least 1841, andsuch statements imply the doctrine was by that point a well-developedone. Staggered elections for the Senate, whatever their intended effect,created a continuing body in the literal meaning of the term: a bodywhose membership is subject to only fractional change at any point intime. This is “continuing body” as an adjective or fact. But the mere factdeveloped into a constitutional self-conception and set of practices, suchthat the actions of past Senators could and should bind or restrict currentmembers of the body. This is “continuing body” as constitutionaldoctrine and practice (Beth 2005, 5; Bruhl 2010). I do not trace thedevelopment of the continuing body doctrine (something that has notbeen done in the literature), but my work suggests the following conjec-ture about its relationship to the interpretation of staggered terms. Couldit be that the Senate began to construct itself as a continuing body, basedon the fact of staggered terms, and as the doctrine of a continuing bodytook hold, the functional purpose of and intent behind staggered termsevolved to harmonize with the construction of the doctrine?

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That is, instead of a particular interpretation of staggered terms’founding purpose driving the idea of a continuing body, the appeal andutility of the continuing body doctrine drove the interpretation of found-ing intent for this small but important feature of the Constitution.Senators developed a motivated bias for appealing and adhering to whatbecame the conventional wisdom. The Senate’s self-conception anddefinition as a continuing and deliberative body circled back to build andreinforce the conventional wisdom. More generally, as the Constitutionwas put into practice and concerns about long terms quickly disappearedamid a gradual process of democratization, the most obvious effect ofstaggered terms was the insulation of two-thirds of the Senate at everynational election—rather than the opportunity to refresh one-third withnew blood. As the average tenure of Representatives and Senatorsquickly converged, the difference in institutional knowledge and stabilityseemed less important than the difference in electoral cycles. Thesedevelopments, along with a lack of scholarship on the origins ofstaggered terms specifically, facilitated the understandable conflation, bysenators and scholars alike, of staggered elections with longer terms andselection by state legislatures as part of the founders’ conservativeintentions.

My purpose in formulating this hypothesis is to suggest the possi-bility that just as the origins of staggered terms for the Senate are morecomplex and interesting than the conventional wisdom implies, therelationship between the interpretation of staggered terms and the devel-opment of the doctrine of the Senate as a continuing body has likelybeen an interdependent and mutually reinforcing discursive process.Regardless of the exact relationship to the continuing body doctrine,the result was a conventional interpretation based more on theconsequences of staggered terms in practice and discourse than on theirhistorical origins.24

Discussion

Stretching from the state constitutions through Ratification,“rotation” had one purpose, ensuring the turnover of officeholders, andstaggered elections were viewed as a form of rotation. Nevertheless,staggered terms were seen by some as more dimensional in theirintended effects than, for example, term limits, a more blunt form of rota-tion. As shown, in a few instances staggered terms were portrayed as aform of accountability that also preserved institutional knowledge orcontinuity, even if this perspective rested on an implicit assumptionthat massive or even complete turnover would occur in bodies without

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staggered terms. But the argument for preservation or continuity ofknowledge was not antidemocratic in the manner typically implied bythe conventional view of staggered Senate elections. In light of theevidence to the contrary, the general argument that the framers addedstaggered terms to further insulate the Senate and further distinguish itfrom the democratic House is unsustainable. When joined together, how-ever, long and staggered terms certainly had multiple effects. Even if theintentions and politics of the Convention led to the addition of staggeredelections to temper long terms, the combination produced a body that, incomparison to the House, never would be subject to the same degree ofpotential electoral change.

As noted at the outset, this study is another illustration of the com-plexity of the Senate’s origins.25 The Senate was of course the object ofthe Great Compromise that tried to blend Madison’s Senate of far-sightedstatesmen with equal and direct representation of states. Placed at theintersection of several constitutional vectors or tensions—responsivenessand deliberation, legislative and executive powers, states and nation—theSenate reflected the multiple forces and goals at work in its construction.The central elements of the Senate’s composition—selection by statelegislatures, six-year terms, and staggered elections—are a packagethat embodies the various ideas and interests. By contrast, the commonunderstanding of Senate staggered terms tends to see and portray theSenate as a neater, more coherent package than it actually was: the found-ers intended the Senate to be the less democratic chamber, therefore thefeatures of its composition, including staggered terms, all contributed tothat goal.

The irony is that staggered elections, a category of rotationintended to prevent the entrenchment or perpetuation of institutionalpower, produced instead the notion of an undying Senate or continuingbody and are interpreted as a vital part of the Senate’s conservativepurpose. Among other things, the continuing body doctrine has been thechief reason the Senate does not vote on its rules of procedure at the startof each Congress, as does the House. In the House, the new majorityvotes on and often modifies that chamber’s rules. In the Senate, no voteis taken automatically. Once a Senate tradition, this practice of not votingon the rules was itself turned into one of the standing rules (Rule V sec.2) in 1959. The doctrine of a continuing body is also an important part ofthe rationale for the higher (two-thirds) supermajority threshold to cutoff debate on proposed changes in Senate rules of procedure.

Senators and scholars alike will no doubt continue to debate theconstitutional and institutional status of the doctrine. This history of thepurpose of staggered terms makes the following contribution: staggered

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terms were for institutional accountability not institutional entrenchment.Even so, my point is not to weigh in on the arguments surrounding thecontinuing body doctrine. Instead, I draw on that controversy to pointout the ironic relationship between the origins of Senate staggered elec-tions and the development of this part of the institution’s self-conceptionand practice. For the Senate to entrench its decisions, to make them allbut perpetual, is the opposite of the main intention behind staggeredterms, even if that original purpose in no way affects Senators’ right orability to develop and apply this particular self-conception. In fact, suchpractices take the Senate beyond the worst fears of rotation’s advocatesinsofar as the continuing body doctrine entrenches not simply the powerof current members but the decisions of those who are no longer inoffice, a majority that no longer exists. With the result that the newmajority—something that rotation was intended to produce—is effec-tively anchored to the past. The 113th Senate, with its momentousalteration of the rules, severed one of those moorings by a vote of 52–48,engineered and supported by the Democratic majority. Whether thechange made by this contentious and controversial use of the“constitutional” or “nuclear” option would endure seemed to hinge onthe outcome of the contests for the 36 senate seats, structured as theywere by staggered terms, at stake in the elections of the 2014. Thus far,and for largely pragmatic purposes, the Republican majority in controlof the Senate of the 114th Congress has left that historic changeundisturbed.

Daniel Wirls <wirls@ucsc.edu> is Professor of Politics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, Merrill College FSO, 1156 HighStreet, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.

NOTES

The author thanks Richard Beth, Matthew Green, Gregory Koger, Frances Lee,Paul Quirk, and Donald Wolfensberger for their comments and suggestions, as well asthe anonymous reviewers for this journal. An earlier version of this article was presentedat the 2013 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association.

1. From the Congressional Globe (quoted in Legislative Reference Service[1917, 4–5]).

2. See among many others Haynes (1938, 341).3. According to Rogers, “the terms of the major branches . . . are so arranged

as to raise effective shields against gusts of popular passion . . . . Senators serve for sixyears . . . and one-third of the membership is renewed every two years” (1926, 15).

4. This claim is based on an extensive bibliographic search, a complete account-ing of which is available from the author, including the details from all works that make

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any claim about the origins and purpose of staggered Senate terms. Nearly 100 workswere examined for any reference to or characterization of staggered terms or rotationrelated to the Senate. In addition to existing bibliographies of Senate scholarship, theauthor’s collection of works on the origins of the Senate, and electronic library catalogsearches, 12 separate searches were done using JSTOR and “Google Scholar.” Noarticles or books were found on the origins of staggered terms. Instead, any claimsabout why staggered terms were applied to the US Senate, if mentioned at all, are part ofbroader studies: books, dissertations, and articles on early state constitutions, the Consti-tutional Convention, the revolutionary and founding eras, Ratification, Senate history,and Congress generally.

5. In the mid to late nineteenth century, the combined impact of state selectionand staggered terms decreased, in some cases, the effect of a national swing in partisan-ship, with party control changing in the House but not the Senate. Overall, however, theSenate typically matched the House in terms of party control (Abramowitz andSegal 1992, 14–26). Moreover, the cause of bicameral divided government in this era iscomplicated by such things as the admission in the late nineteenth century of a largenumber of low-population western states, producing the “free-coinage” of Republicansenators (Stewart and Weingast 1992).

6. Twenty-seven of the 31 states that have four-year terms for all of their sena-tors also stagger their terms by two years: http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Length_of_terms_of_state_senators.

7. Bruhl (2010) attacks the logic of the continuing body doctrine but does notprobe the origins or intent behind staggered terms.

8. The literature, based on the same comprehensive search and review men-tioned above, contains four variations on the conventional wisdom, in order ofdecreasing frequency. First are assertions without evidence of any kind (e.g., Caro 2003,9–10; MacNeil and Baker 2013, 150; Rogers 1926, 15; Smith 1995, 77; Wirls and Wirls2004, 210). Second, this interpretation is offered and supported by brief and casualevidence unrelated to staggered elections. In such cases, there is a general quotationabout the Senate’s difference, such as the ubiquitous “cooling the coffee” anecdote or aquotation from Federalist #62 even though the quotation is unrelated to staggered terms(e.g., Alford and Hibbing 2002, 89–91; Baker 2001, 130; Sinclair 1999, 34). Third,selective or very limited evidence, typically in the form of one or two quotations fromthe records of the Convention is offered to support the usual claim (and sometimes withmisleading or inaccurate information) (e.g., Barbash 1987, 135; Dumbauld 1964, 83;Robertson 2013, 113). Finally, a few suggest that staggered terms blended the goals ofelectoral accountability and institutional continuity, with almost no evidence or analysis(e.g., Eidelberg 1968, 143). Few and far between are claims or implications thatstaggered terms were added to the Senate’s architecture to offset the antidemocraticimplications of a long term (Amar 2005, 144; Swift 2002, 40). These claims are offeredwith no more evidence than is the conventional wisdom.

9. On the importance of rotation (in general, and in both forms) as part of revolu-tionary era constitutionalism, see Wood (1969); Main (1967); and Adams (1980). Onforms of rotation extending back to Athenian democracy, see Manin (1997).

10. Maryland voters picked electors who then gathered in the capital to nominateand select state senators. I have not found anything in the records of the 1776 Marylandconstitutional convention that explains the choice of five years without rotation beyond

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the desire for an independent and conservative body, which is also evident in the useof the two-stage election (see Main 1967, 101–14, 189). South Carolina had the sametwo-year terms for both its chambers.

11. The 1776 Virginia constitution says only, “To keep up this Assembly byrotation, the districts shall be equally divided into four classes and numbered by lot.”

12. See Hutson (1987) for one commentary on the characteristics of the recordsof the Convention and some controversies surrounding their use for historical research.

13. In a 1785 letter outlining ideas for constitutional reform in Virginia, Madisonwent into considerable detail on the form of the legislature and suggested a term of fouror five years for the “other branch” (and up to three for the lower house) and endorsedthe Maryland Senate. He did not mention staggered terms and moreover argued againstlimits on reeligibility, the other type of rotation (Madison 1962, 354). Just prior to theConvention in letters to Edmund Randolph and George Washington, Madison provided“some outlines of a new system” he had been contemplating. As part of this, hementioned as an option staggered terms (rotation) for the smaller second branch of abicameral legislature with longer terms, features which were, again, part of the Virginiaconstitution (Madison 1962, 370, 384–85). Based on a comment about the MarylandSenate in a Madison letter from 1786, Weiner (2012, 50) argues that Madison saw stag-gered terms as part of Weiner calls “temporal republicanism.” As we shall see, thereis no evidence that Madison wanted to include staggered terms in the Virginia Plan orproposed them at the Convention.

14. Dickinson, arguing for a three-year House term, favored the longer term atleast in part for the same practical reason of time and distance: “The idea of annual elec-tions was borrowed from the ancient usage of England, a country much less extensivethan ours.” (RFC, I: 360).

15. It is worth noting that the 1776 constitution has the following preamble—“The Constitution, or System of Government, agreed to and resolved upon by the Repre-sentatives in full Convention of the Delaware State, formerly styled ‘The Government ofthe Counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, upon Delaware’”—which enshrines theimportance of the counties in forming the state, analogous to the states formingthe nation, a point probably not lost on Dickinson, who was a strong protector of equalrepresentation for states at the Convention. Constitution of Delaware.

16. Yates’ notes record Gorham as proposing “that the senators be classed, and toremain 4 years in office; otherwise great inconveniences may arise if a dissolution shouldtake place at once.” (RFC, I: 415). “Inconveniences,” without more context, is ambigu-ous. But it is worth remembering that Gorham’s Massachusetts held annual elections forevery level of its state government, including its senate.

17. Both the Journal and Yates’ notes are clear that rotation was not approved aspart of the motions on seven-, six-, or four-year terms. According to the Journal, “No deter-mination being taken on the three last motions, it was moved and seconded to erase theword ‘seven’ from the 3rd clause of the fourth resolution” (RFC, I: 396), which then passed.

18. Although there was no discussion of this, it was probably clear that rotationwould give each state a shot at having at least one Senator on an interim basis; that is,that senators from the same state would be staggered.

19. Both Madison’s and Yates’ notes have Gorham leading off the debate with aversion of this proposal (I use Yates’ version here).

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20. The phrase in brackets is taken by Madison from Yates’ notes. Yates’s fullversion of Randolph’s remarks is rather more ambiguous: “This body must act withfirmness. They may possibly always sit—perhaps to aid the executive. The state govern-ments will always attempt to counteract the general government. They ought to go out inclasses: therefore I move, that they go out of office in fixed proportions of time, insteadof the words, seven years” (RFC, I: 415). Here Randolph seems to be responding toGorham by defending a longer term than four years and finding a way to add rotation tothe longer term.

21. It might to tempting to see, from a modern perspective, synchronization ofterms as another explanation for introducing staggered terms. That is, unstaggered six-year terms would pose special problems for synchronizing elections across offices. Theentire Senate would be elected presumably at the first presidential election and then notagain until the second midterm election, and so forth. There is, however, no evidencefrom the records of the Convention indicating any concern about or desire for synchroni-zation especially given the decision, already made, for selection by state legislatures.Moreover, seven-year senate terms were initially adopted alongside three years for theHouse, without any consideration by that point of presidential selection.

22. In addition to reading widely in the secondary literature (e.g., Maier 2011;Main 1961) and collections of primary sources on ratification (e.g., Bailyn 1993; DHRC1976), I did an electronic search of Elliot’s Debates using several search terms. The 11just noted include six veterans of the Constitutional Convention.

23. One implication from this study that invites further research is the framers’conception of accountability. As modern democrats and scholars, we tend to thinkmostly in terms of individual accountability in relation to elections or collective responsi-bility in terms of party control. The founding generation debated accountability inwhat seem to be largely institutional terms, and staggered elections produce a level ofinstitutional rather than purely individual accountability.

24. That is, part of the dominant perspective on the purpose of staggered termswas produced or reinforced by the familiar problem of reasoning from functional effectsbackwards to intent and origins.

25. Wirls and Wirls (2004) emphasize the multiple and sometimes contradictoryaspects of the Senate’s construction.

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497Staggered Terms for the Senate