The Constitutional Life of Legislative Instructions in America

This practice flourished for a century, but then died out—a change that many scholars attribute to the Seventeenth Amendment. This Note argues that previous scholars have ignored other, more important reasons for the demise of instructions.

The six-year term length for United States senators, combined with the increasingly rapid turnover in state legislat ures, prevented binding instructions from becoming entrenched. Instructions were held in place only by constitutional culture, but even this did not last. After Southern Democrats vigorously used the practice to purge Whigs from the Senate, instructions were indelibly linked to the South.