U.S. Senate Powers: Underage Senators, Burr's Lost Rule, and a 70 to 1 Gap

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The Constitution sets 30 as the minimum age for a senator, yet the early Senate seated 28 year olds Armistead Thomson Mason and John Eaton and 29 year old Henry Clay, because it judged its own members and did not check. The chamber itself nearly broke the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when small states threatened to leave rather than accept representation by population. The Connecticut Compromise gave every state two senators and passed 5 to 4, and Article 5 bars taking away a state's equal Senate vote without its consent. James Madison described the Senate in Federalist 62 as a stabilizing body, and its name comes from the Latin senex, old man. State legislatures chose senators until the 17th Amendment of 1913.

The Senate confirms nominees, ratifies treaties by two thirds, and tries impeachments, where only seven of 16 officials tried have been convicted and no president. It cannot originate revenue bills but can replace a House bill's entire text with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. The filibuster traces to 1805, when Vice President Aaron Burr suggested dropping the previous question motion, which had allowed a majority to end debate. John C. Calhoun and others were using the gap by 1841, Woodrow Wilson pushed through the first cloture rule in 1917, and the threshold settled at 60 votes in the 1970s. Political scientist Robert Dahl calls the chamber counter-majoritarian, while defenders say it forces broad geographic compromise.

• Joe Biden was elected at 29 in 1972 and turned 30 before his swearing in.
• In 1837 the Senate chose Richard Mentor Johnson as vice president after faithless electors left him one vote short.
• Forty-eight of the chamber's 100 desks date to the 1819 rebuilding after the British burned Washington, and senators carve their names inside the drawers.
• In 1790 Virginia had about ten times Rhode Island's population, while California now has about 70 times Wyoming's.
• A possibly apocryphal story has George Washington telling Thomas Jefferson that the Senate is the saucer where House legislation cools.