I just finished reading Ralph Rossum’s Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment, which I enjoyed a great deal. The book discusses how the framer’s intended to protect the federal balance structurally by allowing the state legislatures to elect the Senate, and how the 17th Amendment, which provided for the direct election of Senators, largely eliminated federalism, which I have discussed briefly before. The book also covers the Supreme Court’s efforts to maintain federalism. I am baffled why Public Choice theory has not picked up on this line of reasoning, the reasoning is very economic.

I will probably give a full review of the book later on.

UPDATE: Instead, I decided to immediately prove myself wrong: Todd Zywicki has a Public Choice analysis of the 17th Amendment, via the Repeal the 17th Amendment blog. I am still unsure why this topic is not more widely covered in Public Choice; for example, Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice, fails to mention the 17th Amendment in its discussion of Federalism.