Minority Rights, Majority Rule seeks to explain a phenomenon evident to most observers of the US Congress. In the House of Representatives, majority parties rule and minorities are seldom able to influence national policy making. In the Senate, minorities quite often call the shots, empowered by the filibuster to frustrate the majority. Why did the two chambers develop such distinctive legislative styles? Conventional wisdom suggests that differences in the size and workload of the House and Senate led the two chambers to develop very different rules of procedure. Sarah Binder offers an alternative, partisan theory to explain the creation and suppression of minority rights, showing that contests between partisan coalitions have throughout congressional history altered the distribution of procedural rights. Most importantly, new majorities inherit procedural choices made in the past. This institutional dynamic has fuelled the power of partisan majorities in the House but stopped them in their tracks in the Senate.

Today, many votes are decided by majority rules. Likewise, many people are protected by minority rights. This book examines both concepts, explains what they mean, what the Constitution says about them, and how they can be practiced in everyday situations.

Examines the influence of precedent on the behavior of the US Supreme Court justices.

The U.S. government is commonly characterized as being comprised of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. These two parties have differing views of how the government should be run, therefore creating a divide in legislative processes. Majority rule refers to a democracy being governed by decisions upon which a greater portion of people has agreed. However, U.S. citizens have basic and inalienable rights that can't be violated by the government. This book explores these basic and inalienable rights in relation to majority rule, and provides insight to how these concepts are laid out in the U.S. Constitution.