- 1.3.1Senate Composition and Termnot yet published The Senate's foundational clause establishes equal state representation, six-year terms, state-legislature selection (superseded by A17), and individual voting — a chamber designed for stability and federalism rather than population-responsive representation. The diagnostic strain is the growing representation gap (13:1 at ratification, 68:1 today) and the accountability shift from state governments to state electorates after the Seventeenth Amendment.
- 1.3.2Classes and Vacanciesnot yet published The three-class rotation system and the vacancy-filling mechanism serve the same design goal: ensuring the Senate is a continuous institution, never dissolved and never entirely renewed. The diagnostic strain is federalism variance in vacancy filling — the path to a Senate seat depends on which state the vacancy occurs in.
- 1.3.3Qualifications of Senatorsnot yet published Three qualifications — age thirty, nine years' citizenship, state inhabitancy — set a constitutional floor for Senate membership that operates as both floor and ceiling. The clause holds structurally; its most significant feature is what it leaves to the electorate rather than what it requires.
- 1.3.4Vice President as President of the Senatenot yet published The Vice President's dual role as executive officer and Senate presiding officer is a constitutional compromise that resolves the tie-breaking problem but creates a cross-branch asymmetry — one whose structural visibility increases with partisan polarization and narrow Senate margins.
- 1.3.5Senate Officersnot yet published The officers clause gives the Senate self-governance authority over its own institutional machinery, but the chamber's actual power structure has migrated to an extraconstitutional office — the Majority Leader — creating one of Article I's widest gaps between text and practice.
- 1.3.6Trial of Impeachmentsnot yet published The Senate's sole power to try impeachments creates a quasi-judicial function within a political body — structured by oath, threshold, and presiding-officer substitution but unspecified in procedure. The mechanism works for judges; its effectiveness for presidents depends on partisan conditions the framers anticipated but could not structurally resolve.
- 1.3.7Judgment on Impeachmentnot yet published The judgment clause caps impeachment sanctions at removal and disqualification while preserving criminal liability — a two-spheres design that separates political accountability from legal punishment. The design holds; the strains are the disqualification threshold asymmetry and the jurisdictional gap for former officials.