Will & Co. are going at it over at Crescat regarding "over-representation."
In his most recent post, Will writes that "[The author in question] could have spoken strictly by saying 'the people of the big agricultural states' or 'voters in such states' are over-represented, which they are."
Are they though? If the Constitution creates a body--call it "the Senate"--in which various groups are going to be represented by geography rather than population, I know that "representation" (in terms of voters per Senator) won't be equal. Saying people are "over-represented" seems to make a judgment about the amount of representation that is desirable (I derive that judgment from the "over" part), and that somehow the group in question exceeds that desired representation.
But, it doesn't strike me as being that clear cut. At least there's an argument to be made that voters are represented exactly correctly -- their strength may be disproportionate to their numbers, but does this make over-representation? The constitutional scheme created a Senate based on geography, so it strikes me as wrong to say that there is over- or under-representation. For example, if state X had 80 million voters and three representatives and state Y had 20 voters and two representatives, those is state X are over-represented by Constitutional standards. If both X and Y had two senators, their representation is exactly as called for -- no more, no less. No state is over-represented, but neither are any "voters" or "people," as Will suggested.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2004
(473)
-
▼
April
(76)
- Bad TNI
- Games!
- Yes, Some Students Live in the Library (But Not Li...
- Smooth Criminal or Just Good Friends?
- Sumo
- Meanest Senator
- Toomey v Specter
- That that make you go hmm
- AP Copyright
- Boeing's New 7E7
- Toby Young's Slate Diary on LA
- You Don't See This Everyday
- Frasier is Republican
- Zinn and Chomsky's DVD Commentary for the Fellowsh...
- Things Heard In The Seventh Circuit
- Book Non-Recommendation: "Now is the Time to Open ...
- Those Silly North Koreans
- I was a Supreme Court clerk for THIS?
- Rest In Peace
- Ditching Diversity: Will elites return to racism?,...
- You Can't Say He Didn't Warn You
- Most Influential Law Professors
- Newdow
- Infringement or not -- You decide!
- Over-representation...
- How Appealing, Hosted by Legalaffairs.com
- Why Am I Blogging So Late?
- My Boys Have All Grown Up . . .
- You thought "live TV" meant "live TV"?
- This Gun's for Hire
- Public Service Announcement
- New Iraq Exit Strategy: Let's Bring Back Hussein, ...
- The Onion's Influence
- Dalai Lama: Modern Spiritual Leader or Sellout?
- How I Spent Summer Vacation: At Getting-Into-Colle...
- 5000 Hits
- Wi-Fi on Planes
- Career choices
- Cleaning House
- Hall of Fame Monitor
- Bush Apologizes!
- Citechecking Silliness
- Us and Them
- The nature of the Bill of Rights
- "Jewish Museum"
- The Academy of Arts and Sciences: Law
- More on corporate obligations
- Citecheck Funnies
- Response to "Corporate Obligations"
- Antitrust and Texbooks
- TV Quake Film Has Experts Shaking -- Heads
- Beating the Airport Lines, Part I: Check-in
- Ouch!
- New York Minute
- Subservient Chicken
- Blogging From The Airport: Beating the Lines
- Currie Quip
- Koizumi and Yasukuni
- "Front-Runner's Fall"
- SportsNotReallyCenter
- Today's Journal
- Baseball Season Begins!
- Rice Testimony
- Citecheck Funnies
- Southern U Scandal
- Dancing/Conducting Robots
- Conan's future
- On Language On Recusal
- Frakes returns
- SW DVDs
- Yoshi!
- Thoughts on the Peloponnesian War
- EEZs and Navassa
- Music Suggestion
- A Link From How Appealing . . .
- Is GMail real?
-
▼
April
(76)
No comments:
Post a Comment