WI: The Congressional Apportionment Amendment is Ratified

Well, I presume you mean this version, originially submitted to the states:

Article the First said:
After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

Well, I wish we had a slightly better source because the Wiki article seems patchy. I seem to remember reading that there were concerns that the formula might be interpretted to limit the size of the House, making it more oligarchical than it is now.

To me mind two factors hampered the ammendment OTL: 1) the inclusion of actual numbers limits the adaptability of the institution of the House and 2) it might create a House so large as to be ineffective (the latter being more pressing in 1790). To my mind, the best answer for its failure is its opacity: unlike the text of the rest of the Constitution, it's fairly difficult for a lay person to discern its meaning. An ATL ammendment which would be somewhat more vauge and set standards (in the same manner as "cruel and unusual" or "due process") would leave some ability for later reformers to insist on a larger House.

Nonetheless, the likely effect of the ammendment as is passing in 1790 would be to drastically alter the position of Speaker. This may be another reason for the difficulty in passing this ammendment: in the First Congress, the Speaker of the House was more like the Speaker of the House of Commons: a figurehead intended to keep order, not the head of a coaltion/majority party. Hence the House had to organize itself; with 1790 methods of organization, the House might literally prove ungovernable. This changed with the arrival of Henry Clay who introduced the Committee system; the power of the Speaker grew in 1881 with alterations to the Committee on Rules and allowing the Speaker to appoint members of this committee and apportion the heads of others. With a much larger House, such a system will become more important and more influential: the larger the house, the less the influence of any single member and the greater the power of an office to control them all.

The history of the Speakership may here prove instructive. From its pinnacle in the 1880s-1910s under Joseph Cannon, the Speaker suffered a major blow in what is called "the 1910 Revolt" when members of the House upset with Cannon's domination changed the rules to limit the power to apportion committees to the Rules Cmte itself and ensured a fair election to that body. The tide began to shift back to the Speaker under Sam Rayburn and came to a head in the mid-1970s upon the election of Tip O'Neil; in O'Neil's term the power of the Speaker to appoint half the members of the Rules Cmte was introduced, effectively re-granting to him the power of committee apportionment which governs the legislative agenda.

To my mind, the passage of this ammendment would either create a de-facto Prime Minister in the person of the Speaker of the House (to control the House) or vastly increase the power of the Presidency (to bargain with enough of the marginally non-powerful House Members). It's hard to say that both would happen at once, since the Speaker and the President would presumably find themselves with conflicting mandates. Also, the Senate's influence would skyrocket, since it would be so much significantly a smaller body.

It is suprising to me that no one has yet tried to pull a 27th Amendment with this change and force its passage by getting an additional 27 states to pass it (since there's no expiration included in the amendment). Then again, I find it strange that the US has such historically small legislative assemblies, when compared to those of the rest of the English speaking world.
 
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