3 Qualifications for the House of Representatives Member

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for hell-raising Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Fellow member."
—Commodity 1, section 5, clause two

The Constitution grants the House broad power to discipline its Members for acts that range from criminal misconduct to violations of internal House Rules. While the constitutional authority to punish a Member who engages in "disorderly Behaviour" is intended, in office, as an instrument of individual rebuke, it serves principally to protect the reputation of the establishment and to preserve the dignity of its proceedings.

Over the decades, several forms of bailiwick have evolved in the House. The most severe type of punishment is expulsion from the Firm, which is followed by censure, and finally reprimand. Expulsion, as mandated in the Constitution, requires a ii-thirds majority vote. Censure and reprimand, which evolved through House precedent and practice, are imposed past a simple majority of the full House.

/tiles/non-collection/2/2009_130_001crop_wood_censure.xml Collection of the U.Due south. Firm of Representatives
About this object Tammany Hall Democrat Fernando Wood stood at the Speaker's rostrum to be censured for "unparliamentary language" in 1868 during the 40th Congress. No stranger to inflammatory speech, Wood reportedly had referred to a piece of legislation every bit "a monstrosity, a measure of the near infamous acts of this infamous Congress."

These are not the but penalties which the House may levy on its Members. Beginning with the cosmos of a formal ideals process in the tardily 1960s, the Commission on Ethics (which for many years was called the Committee on Standards of Official Deport) has had the ability to issue a formal "Letter of Reproval." The Ethics Committee may too opt to register its disapproval of a particular action using more informal means. Commission rules, as well as the rules of the individual party caucuses, provide other means of discipline. For example, Members may also be fined, stripped of committee leadership positions and seniority, or deprived of other privileges depending on the infractions.

Expulsion

The sternest form of punishment that the House has imposed on its Members is expulsion, an activity which it has used only 5 times in more than than two centuries.

The Constitution empowers both the Business firm and the Senate to expel a sitting Fellow member who engages in "disorderly Behaviour," requiring a two-thirds vote of those present and voting in the sleeping room to which the Member belongs. As these are internal matters, neither the House nor the Senate requires the concurrence of the other bedroom to expel ane of its own Members.

In devising this framework, the Ramble Convention drew upon British legislative tradition as well every bit nearly 175 years of precedent in the colonial assemblies in North America. Other than the two-thirds requirement, however, the Framers left information technology up to the House and Senate to make up one's mind their own rules and the type of behavior that might warrant expulsion from their respective chambers.

Despite this broad grant of dominance, the Framers set the 2-thirds threshold because such an action would necessarily remove someone who had been elected past the popular vote of his or her constituents. And though the House has wide discretion to act in such cases, it has demonstrated peachy deference to the peoples' choice of their Representatives. Ane measure of that restraint is that the Firm has never expelled any Member for conduct that took identify before his or her House service. Nor has the House removed Members for action in a prior Congress when the electorate insisted on re-electing them to the House despite a record of improper comport.^ane

/tiles/non-drove/n/nast_credit_mobilier_2014_141_000.xml Collection of the U.Southward. House of Representatives
About this object This 1873 Harper's Weekly drawing illustrates the aftermath of the Crédit Mobilier scandal. The House investigated the railroad influence scheme and censured two of its Members—Oakes Ames of Massachusetts and James Brooks of New York—for using their part for personal gain. Cartoonist Thomas Nast decried the widespread graft, implying that the multitude of resolutions that condemned corruption and buried the Firm rostrum were insincere attempts at reform.

Expulsion has traditionally been reserved as penalization for only the most reprehensible carry or crimes such every bit treasonous acts against the government. The showtime 3 individuals expelled from the House—Missourians John B. Clark and John W. Reid, and Henry C. Burnett of Kentucky—took up arms for the Confederacy during the Ceremonious State of war. In the modern era, expulsion has been used on ii other occasions, both of which involved egregious violations of criminal law and/or flagrant abuses of office.

While expulsion has been used sparingly, it should exist noted that some Members who faced imminent expulsion from the Firm have chosen to resign instead. Two Members who sold appointments to U.South. military academies presently after the Civil War, South Carolina's Benjamin Whittemore and North Carolina's John DeWeese, resigned their seats before the House voted to expel them. Adamant to register its contempt for their beliefs, the Business firm all the same censured both men, fifty-fifty later on their resignations.

Others lost their seats in subsequent elections before the House took formal action. The Framers anticipated this possibility and, in part, used it to rationalize the House's 2-year election cycle. Equally James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57, "the Business firm of Representatives is and so constituted as to back up in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Earlier the sentiments impressed on their minds by the mode of their tiptop can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to conceptualize the moment when their power is to cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall have established their title to a renewal of information technology."² Run across a list of Members who have been expelled from the Firm of Representatives.

Censure

While censure also derives from the same ramble clause, information technology is non a term the Framers expressly mentioned.ⁱⁱⁱ

Censure does not remove a Member from office. Once the House approves the sanction by majority vote, the censured Member must stand up in the well of the House ("the bar of the Business firm" was the nineteenth-century term) while the Speaker or presiding officer reads aloud the censure resolution and its preamble as a grade of public rebuke.

Decades before the House first expelled Members information technology contemplated censure to register its deep disapproval of a Member's beliefs. Early in its existence, the Firm considered (only did not ultimately use) censure to punish Matthew Lyon of Vermont and Roger Griswold of Connecticut for well-publicized breaches of decorum in early 1798. Lyon had spat on Griswold during a heated argument and, when the House afterward declined to expel or censure the Vermonter, Griswold sought to defend his honor by caning him at his desk. Consumed by this "affray," the House created a Committee on Privileges to investigate the incident though information technology ultimately refused to recommend a penalty later both men promised "to keep the peace."

Especially during the nineteenth century, when politicians fought duels over affronts to their award and reputation, censure emerged as a means to effectively claiming a Member's integrity. From the early 1830s to the late 1860s, the House censured individuals for unacceptable carry that occurred largely during floor debate. The first time the House censured one of its own occurred in 1832 when William Stanbery of Ohio insulted Speaker Andrew Stevenson of Virginia. But since these transgressions did not ascent to the level of expulsion, House practise required a simple majority vote on a resolution by those Members present and voting.

/tiles/non-collection/fifty/lfp_035imgpres1.xml Image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Assistants
Most this tape In July 1856, the Firm voted on a motion to expel Representative Preston Brooks of Southward Carolina from Congress for his tearing attack against Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. As the above vote tally sail indicates, the Business firm did non achieve the two-thirds vote necessary to strip Brooks of his seat, with 121 Members voting to expel him and 95 voting against removal.

Indeed, though the House notably rebuked several Golden Age Members for bribery, nearly nineteenth-century censures were handed down for unparliamentary behavior, usually defamatory or insulting statements made against a House colleague. In 1856, in the wake of perhaps the near well-known episode of congressional violence, the House censured Laurence Keitt for assisting fellow South Carolinian Preston Brooks as he brutally assaulted Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a pikestaff on the Senate Floor; the House failed to muster the two-thirds vote necessary to expel Brooks. Believing that putting the question to their constituents would vindicate them, both Keitt and Brooks resigned their seats and subsequently won the special elections to make full their ain vacancies. A decade later, Lovell Rousseau of Kentucky suffered the censure punishment for caning Iowan Josiah Grinnell after the two exchanged insults almost their respective military service in the Ceremonious War. Like Keitt, Rousseau resigned his seat afterward the indignity of existence censured only to take constituents re-elect him. See a list of Members who take been censured by the Firm of Representatives.

Reprimand

Like censure, the discussion reprimand does not announced in the Constitution. And its meaning has changed over fourth dimension. For much of the House's history, in fact well into the twentieth century, the word reprimand was used interchangeably with censure. For instance, the censure resolution passed against Thomas L. Blanton in 1921 directed him to the bar of the House to receive its "reprimand and censure."

The mod use of the term reprimand evolved relatively recently, following the creation of a formal ethics process in the late 1960s.⁴ A reprimand registers the Firm'south disapproval for comport that warrants a less severe rebuke than censure. Typically, in mod practice, the Ethics Committee recommends a reprimand (every bit it does in the case of censure) past submitting a resolution accompanied with a report to the total House. Reprimand requires a simple bulk vote on the resolution brought before the Business firm and, in some instances, may be implemented simply by the adoption of the commission report. A reprimanded Member is not required to stand in the well of the Firm to take a verbal admonishment. Since the first instance of the House taking such activity in 1976, a total of 11 individuals have been reprimanded by the House. Run into a listing of Members who have been reprimanded by the House of Representatives.

For Farther Reading

Brown, Cynthia, "Expulsion, Censure, Reprimand, and Fine: Legislative Discipline in the Firm of Representatives," Report No. RL31382, 27 June 2016, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC.

Committee on Ethics, "Historical Summary of Carry Cases in the House of Representatives, 1798–2004," http://ideals.house.gov/sites/ethics.house.gov/files/Historical_Chart_Final_Version%20in%20Word_0.pdf (accessed 20 March 2017).

_______. "Summary of Activities," http://ideals.house.gov/reports/summary-activities (accessed twenty March 2017).

Congressional Tape, House, 67th Cong., 1st sess. (27 Oct 1921): 6880–6896.

Hinds, Asher C. Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives of the U.s.a., Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Authorities Printing Part, 1907): Chapter 52 §1642–1643: 1114–1116.

Maskell, Jack H., "Subject of Members," in Donald C. Bacon et al., eds, The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress Vol. 2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995): 641–646.

McKay, William, and Charles Westward. Johnson. Parliament & Congress: Representation & Scrutiny in the 20-Starting time Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 517–546.

waddingtonuntoonesch.blogspot.com

Source: https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/Discipline/

Share this post