Reply #70: The Senate did not make interracial marriage legal, the Supreme Court

[kelly1mm]

did. (Technically, they found that laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional - see Loving v. Virginia). The Senate does have at least two aspects that support your overall point, but at least one of them is not exactly on point. The Senate's makeup of 2 Senators per state was set up to protect the small states from the gig states, not really the minority of people from the majority. This was even more true in the original constitution when Senators were sent to the Senate by the state legislatures themselves rather than by direct election by the voters. The second aspect is the filibuster rule, saying in general you need 60 votes (rather than 50+1) to end debate on an issue and allow it to come to a vote. This also tends to protect the minority. However this is just a rule of the Senate an can be changed at any time and is probably unconstitutional anyway. The only reason it has not been looked at by the SC is that nobody (no Senator) has challenged the rule so there has been no "case or controversy" for the SC to take a look at. Sometimes this is threatened and is known as the "nuclear option".