Requirements for Being a House of Representatives Member

Article I, Section 2, Clause 2:

No Person shall exist a Representative who shall not accept attained to the Historic period of twenty five Years, and been 7 Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, exist an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be called.

A question much disputed but now seemingly settled is whether a condition of eligibility must exist at the fourth dimension of the election or whether it is sufficient that eligibility exist when the Fellow member-elect presents himself to take the oath of office. Although the linguistic communication of the clause expressly makes residency in the state a condition at the fourth dimension of ballot, it now appears established in congressional practice that the age and citizenship qualifications need only be met when the Member-elect is to be sworn.1 Thus, persons elected to either the Business firm of Representatives or the Senate before attaining the required age or term of citizenship have been admitted as soon as they became qualified.2

Writing in The Federalist with reference to the ballot of Members of Congress, Hamilton firmly stated that "[t]he qualifications of the persons who may . . . be chosen . . . are defined and stock-still in the constitution; and are unalterable past the legislature." iii Until the Civil War, the effect was not raised, the just deportment taken by either House conforming to the idea that the qualifications for membership could not be enlarged by statute or practice.4 But in the passions aroused by the fratricidal disharmonize, Congress enacted a law requiring its members to accept an oath that they had never been disloyal to the National Government.5 Several persons were refused seats by both Houses considering of charges of disloyalty,6 and thereafter House practise, and Senate practice as well, was erratic.7 But in Powell 5. McCormack ,8 it was conclusively established that the qualifications listed in clause 2 are exclusive9 and that Congress could not add to them by excluding Members-elect non meeting the additional qualifications.10

Powell was excluded from the 90th Congress on grounds that he had asserted an unwarranted privilege and immunity from the procedure of a state courtroom, that he had wrongfully diverted Firm funds for his own uses, and that he had made false reports on the expenditures of strange currency.11 The Court determination that he had been wrongfully excluded proceeded in the primary from the Court's analysis of historical developments, the Convention debates, and textual considerations. This process led the Court to conclude that Congress'south power under Article I, § 5 to guess the qualifications of its Members was limited to ascertaining the presence or absence of the standing qualifications prescribed in Article I, § ii, cl. 2, and maybe in other express provisions of the Constitution.12 The conclusion followed considering the English language parliamentary practice and the colonial legislative practice at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, later some earlier deviations, had settled into a policy that exclusion was a power exercisable simply when the Fellow member-elect failed to see a standing qualification,13 considering in the Constitutional Convention the Framers had defeated provisions allowing Congress past statute either to create property qualifications or to create additional qualifications without limitation,xiv and considering both Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers and Hamilton in the New York ratifying convention had strongly urged that the Constitution prescribed exclusive qualifications for Members of Congress.fifteen

Further, the Courtroom observed that the early practice of Congress, with many of the Framers serving, was consistently express to the view that exclusion could be exercised just with regard to a Fellow member-elect failing to meet a qualification expressly prescribed in the Constitution. Not until the Civil War did contrary precedents announced, and after do was mixed.16 Finally, fifty-fifty were the intent of the Framers less clear, said the Courtroom, it would withal be compelled to interpret the power to exclude narrowly. "A fundamental principle of our representative democracy is, in Hamilton's words, 'that the people should choose whom they please to govern them.' 2 Elliot's Debates 257. As Madison pointed out at the Convention, this principle is undermined as much by limiting whom the people tin can select as by limiting the franchise itself. In apparent agreement with this basic philosophy, the Convention adopted his suggestion limiting the power to miscarry. To allow essentially that same power to be exercised under the guise of judging qualifications, would be to ignore Madison's warning, borne out in the Wilkes case and some of Congress'southward own post-Civil War exclusion cases, against 'vesting an improper and dangerous power in the Legislature.' " 17 Thus, the Court appears to say, to let the House to exclude Powell on this basis of qualifications of its own choosing would impinge on the interests of his constituents in effective participation in the balloter process, an interest which could be protected by a narrow interpretation of Congressional power.eighteen

The consequence in Powell had been foreshadowed when the Court held that the exclusion of a Member-elect by a land legislature because of objections he had uttered to sure national policies constituted a violation of the First Amendment and was void.xix In the class of that conclusion, the Court denied country legislators the ability to look behind the willingness of whatsoever legislator to take the adjuration to support the Constitution of the United States, prescribed by Article Half dozen, cl. 3, to test his sincerity in taking it.20 The unanimous Court noted the views of Madison and Hamilton on the exclusivity of the qualifications set up out in the Constitution and alluded to Madison'southward view that the unfettered discretion of the legislative branch to exclude members could exist abused in behalf of political, religious or other orthodoxies.21 The First Subpoena holding and the property with regard to testing the sincerity with which the adjuration of office is taken is no doubt as applicable to the United States Congress as to state legislatures.

Nonetheless much Congress may take deviated from the principle that the qualifications listed in the Constitution are exclusive when the result has been congressional enlargement of those qualifications, it has been uniform in rejecting efforts past the states to enlarge the qualifications. Thus, the House in 1807 seated a Fellow member-elect who was challenged equally not being in compliance with a state law imposing a twelve-month residency requirement in the district, rather than the federal requirement of beingness an inhabitant of the state at the time of election; the land requirement, the House resolved, was unconstitutional.22 Similarly, both the House and Senate have seated other Members-elect who did not run across additional state qualifications or who suffered item state disqualifications on eligibility, such as running for Congress while holding particular state offices.

The Supreme Court reached the same determination as to land power, albeit by a surprisingly shut v-four vote, in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton .23 Arkansas, along with twenty-ii other states, all merely 2 by citizen initiatives, had limited the number of terms that Members of Congress may serve. In striking down the Arkansas term limits, the Court adamant that the Constitution's qualifications clauses24 plant exclusive qualifications for Members that may not exist added to either by Congress or the states.25 Six years later, the Courtroom relied on Thornton to invalidate a Missouri law requiring that labels exist placed on ballots alongside the names of congressional candidates who had "disregarded voters' instruction on term limits" or declined to pledge support for term limits.26

Both bulk and dissenting opinions in Thornton were richly embellished with disputatious arguments about the text of the Constitution, the history of its drafting and ratification, and the practices of Congress and the states in the nation's early on years,27 and these differences over text, creation, and practice derived from disagreement about the fundamental principle underlying the Constitution'southward adoption.

In the dissent's view, the Constitution was the consequence of the resolution of the peoples of the carve up states to create the National Government. The determination to be drawn from this was that the peoples in the states agreed to surrender only those powers expressly forbidden them and those express powers that they had delegated to the Federal Regime expressly or by necessary implication. They retained all other powers and notwithstanding retain them. Thus, "[due west]here the Constitution is silent almost the do of a item power—that is, where the Constitution does non speak either expressly or past necessary implication—the Federal Government lacks that ability and the States enjoy it." 28 The Constitution's silence as to authorization to impose additional qualifications meant that this power resides in u.s..

The majority's views were radically different. After the adoption of the Constitution, the states had ii kinds of powers: reserved powers that they had before the founding and that were non surrendered to the Federal Government, and those powers delegated to them by the Constitution. Information technology followed that the states could have no reserved powers with respect to the Federal Authorities. "As Justice Story recognized, 'the states can exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively jump out of the existence of the national regime, which the constitution does non delegate to them. . . . No state can say, that it has reserved, what information technology never possessed.'" 29 The states could non before the founding have possessed powers to legislate respecting the Federal Government, and, because the Constitution did not consul to the states the ability to prescribe qualifications for Members of Congress, us did not have any such ability.30

Manifestly, the opinions in this instance reflect more than a conclusion on this particular dispute. They rather correspond conflicting philosophies within the Court respecting the scope of national power in relation to the states, an issue at the cadre of many controversies today.

Footnotes

1

Run into S. Rep. No. 904, 74th Congress, 1st sess. (1935), reprinted in 79 Cong. Rec. 9651–9653 (1935).

2

one Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives § 418 (1907); 79 Cong. Rec. 9841–42 (1935); cf. 1 Hinds, supra note ii, at § 429.

iii

No. threescore (J. Cooke ed. 1961), 409. Meet besides 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §§ 623–27 (1833) (relating to the power of the States to add qualifications).

iv

All the instances appear to exist, still, cases in which the contest arose out of a claimed additional state qualification.

5

Act of July 2, 1862, 12 Stat. 502. Note also the disqualification written into § iii of the Fourteenth Amendment.

6

1 Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives §§ 451, 449, 457 (1907).

7

In 1870, the House excluded a Member-elect who had been re-elected subsequently resigning earlier in the aforementioned Congress when expulsion proceedings were instituted against him for selling appointments to the Military machine Academy. Id. at § 464. A Member-elect was excluded in 1899 because of his practise of polygamy, id. at 474–eighty, simply the Senate refused, afterward adopting a rule requiring a ii-thirds vote, to exclude a Member-elect on those grounds. Id. at §§ 481–483. The House twice excluded a socialist Member-elect in the wake of World War I on allegations of disloyalty. 6 Cannon's Precedents of the Firm of Representatives §§ 56–58 (1935). See also S. Rep. No. 1010, 77th Congress, 2nd sess. (1942), and R. Hupman, Senate Election, Expulsion and Censure Cases From 1789 to 1960, Due south. Doc. No. 71, 87th Congress, second sess. (1962), 140 (dealing with the endeavour to exclude Senator Langer of North Dakota).

8

395 U.S. 486 (1969). The Court divided eight to i, Justice Stewart dissenting on the ground that the case was moot. Powell's continuing validity was affirmed in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), both past the Court in its holding that the qualifications set out in the Constitution are exclusive and may not be added to past either Congress or the states, id. at 787–98, and past the dissenters, who would hold that Congress, for different reasons could not add to qualifications, although usa could. Id. at 875–76.

9

The Court declined to reach the question whether the Constitution in fact does impose other qualifications. 395 U.Southward. at 520 northward.41 (possibly Article I, § iii, cl. 7, disqualifying persons impeached, Article I, § 6, cl. 2, incompatible offices, and § 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment). It is too possible that the adjuration provision of Commodity Six, cl. iii, could exist considered a qualification. See Bond v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 129–131 (1966).

x

395 U.S. at 550 .

xi

H. Rep. No. 27, 90th Congress, 1st sess. (1967); 395 U.South. at 489–493 .

12

Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 518–47 (1969).

13

395 U.S. at 522–31 .

14

395 U.S. at 532–39 .

15

395 U.S. at 539–41 .

sixteen

395 U.S. at 541–47 .

17

2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 249 (Max Farrand ed., 1937); 395 U.S. at 547–48 .

eighteen

The protection of the voters' interest in being represented by the person of their choice is thus analogized to their constitutionally secured correct to cast a election and take information technology counted in full general elections, Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884), and in primary elections, United States v. Classic, 313 U.Due south. 299 (1941), to bandage a ballot undiluted in strength considering of unequally populated districts, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.Due south. 1 (1964), and to cast a vote for candidates of their choice unfettered past onerous restrictions on candidate qualification for the ballot. Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.South. 23 (1968).

19

Bail v. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116 (1966).

20

385 U.Southward. at 129–31, 132, 135 .

21

385 U.S. at 135 n.13 .

22

1 Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives § 414 (1907).

23

514 U.S. 779 (1995). The majority was equanimous of Justice Stevens (writing the opinion of the Courtroom) and Justices Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Dissenting were Justice Thomas (writing the opinion) and Master Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor and Scalia. Id. at 845.

24

Article I, § ii, cl. 2, provides that a person may qualify as a Representative if she is at least 25 years old, has been a U.s.a. denizen for at least 7 years, and is an inhabitant, at the time of the ballot, of the state in which she is chosen. The qualifications established for Senators, Article I, § three, cl. iii, are an historic period of 30 years, 9 years' citizenship, and being an inhabitant of the state at the time of election.

25

The iv-Justice dissent argued that while Congress has no power to increase qualifications, the States do. 514 U.Due south. at 845 .

26

Cook v. Gralike, 531 U.S. 510 (2001).

27

See Sullivan, Dueling Sovereignties: U.Due south. Term Limits, Inc. five. Thornton, 109 Harv. Fifty. Rev. 78 (1995).

28

514 U.S. at 848 (Justice Thomas dissenting). See more often than not id. at 846–65.

29

514 U.S. at 802 .

thirty

514 U.Southward. at 798–805 . Run across likewise id. at 838–45 (Justice Kennedy concurring). The Courtroom applied similar reasoning in Cook v. Gralike, 531 U.S. 510, 522–23 (2001), invalidating ballot labels identifying congressional candidates who had non pledged to support term limits. Because congressional offices arise from the Constitution, the Court explained, no authority to regulate these offices could have preceded the Constitution and been reserved to the states, and the ballot labels were non valid exercise of the power granted by Article I, § 4 to regulate the "manner" of belongings elections. See discussion under Legislation Protecting Electoral Process, infra.

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Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-2/clause-2/qualifications-of-members-of-the-house-of-representatives

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