Repeal the 17th Amendment? Forthcoming Engage Article

Repeal the 17th Amendment? Forthcoming Engage Article: FedSoc Blog

There have lately been calls to repeal the 17th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and replaced the election of U.S. senators by state legislators under the original constitutional system with the current system of election by the people of each state.
To contribute to this debate, Professors Todd Zywicki and Ilya Somin of George Mason University School of Law have written an article for the forthcoming August 2011 edition of Engage: The Journal of the Federalist Society Practice Groups debating whether repealing the 17th Amendment would restore the original intent of the Founders by increasing the power of the states in the federal system.
Prof. Zywicki argues that repeal would benefit the federal system by returning to state legislatures the authority to elect senators and thus effectively granting them an opportunity to directly influence federal legislation being considered at the federal level. Prof. Somin argues, on the other hand, that repeal would do little if anything to curb federal power because states would probably still allow their citizens to elect U.S. senators, and because senators would still have insufficient incentive to limit federal power.
Click here for the pdf of the article, brought to you by the Federalist Society's Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group.