ABSTRACT
Earlier chapters offer several examples of legislative and parliamentary bodies giving coherence to their deliberations and voting by establishing formalized voting rules whereby a set of alternatives is considered and voted on in some sequential fashion until a final outcome is arrived at. Agendas, though, need not be formal well-defined parliamentary procedures dictated by such things as Robert’s Rules of Order. For example, as Convention delegates saddled up or stepped into their horse-drawn carriages in 1787 for the trip to Philadelphia, a young James Madison had already squirreled himself away in that city to study and refine his proposal for a radically new national charter. Called the Virginia Plan by historians, the delegates ultimately rejected many of Madison’s ideas, including things he deemed critically important, such as having states represented in both legislative chambers, the House and the Senate, in proportion to their populations; a provision for a federal legislative veto over state laws; and a president selected by the national legislature. Nevertheless, having formulated a comprehensive proposal, much of the subsequent debate that summer was dictated or influenced by Madison’s draft. Indeed, we should keep in mind that the delegates were, in fact, directed by the then-U.S. Congress to consider only amendments to the current Articles of Confederation whereas Madison’s draft tossed the Articles into the trash and started anew. Madison, then, largely set the agenda for the Convention, albeit not in a formally defined way.
