Judge Bybee has argued that the amendment led to the gradual "slide into ignominy" of state legislatures, with the lack of a state-based check on Congress allowing the federal government to supersede states.[2] This was partially fueled by the Senators; he wrote in the Northwestern University Law Review:
Politics, like nature, abhorred a vacuum, so senators felt the pressure to do something, namely enact laws. Once senators were no longer accountable to and constrained by state legislatures, the maximizing function for senators was unrestrained; senators almost always found in their own interest to procure federal legislation, even to the detriment of state control of traditional state functions.[21]
Rossum, concurring, gives the New Deal legislation as an early example of the expansion of federal regulation.[44] Ure agrees, saying that not only is each Senator now free to ignore his state's needs, Senators "have incentive to use their advice-and-consent powers to install Supreme Court justices who are inclined to increase federal power at the expense of state sovereignty."[45] Donald J. Kochan, for an article in the Albany Law Review, analyzed the effect of the Seventeenth Amendment on Supreme Court decisions over the constitutionality of state legislation. He found a "statistically significant difference" in the number of cases holding state legislation unconstitutional before and after the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, with the number of holdings of unconstitutionality increasing sixfold.[46]
As well as a decline in the influence of the states, Ure also argues that the Seventeenth Amendment led to the rise of special interest groups to fill the void; with citizens replacing state legislators as the Senate's electorate, with citizens being less able to monitor the actions of their Senators, the Senate became more susceptible to pressure from interest groups, who in turn were more influential due to the centralization of power in the federal government; an interest group no longer needed to lobby many state legislatures, and could instead focus its efforts on the federal government.[47] Zywicki agrees with this, but attributes the rise in the strength of interest groups partially to the development of the U.S. economy. The 20th century shifted economic growth to an interstate level, and with the rise of the financial power of a national rather than state-based market, the gains available to those who could tap into the market through the political process increased.[48]
A comparison of the likely electoral results for the Senate if the Seventeenth Amendment had not been adopted showed that it had "an immediate and dramatic impact on the political composition of the U.S. Senate". Bybee believes that if the Seventeenth Amendment had not been adopted, the 1916 Senate elections, which saw the Democrats retain control of the Senate, would have actually seen the Republicans gain political control with 53 seats.[49] Similarly, he believes the Republican Revolution of 1994 would not have happened; instead, the Democrats would have controlled 70 seats in the Senate to the Republicans' 30.
I'm embarrassed for you
