Qualifications to Serve in the House of Representatives

Commodity I, Department 2, Clause two:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not accept attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been 7 Years a Citizen of the Us, and who shall non, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that Land in which he shall be chosen.

A question much disputed but now seemingly settled is whether a status of eligibility must be at the time of the ballot or whether it is sufficient that eligibility exist when the Member-elect presents himself to take the oath of office. Although the language of the clause expressly makes residency in the country a condition at the fourth dimension of election, it now appears established in congressional practice that the age and citizenship qualifications need merely be met when the Member-elect is to be sworn.1 Thus, persons elected to either the House of Representatives or the Senate earlier attaining the required historic period or term of citizenship have been admitted as before long as they became qualified.2

Writing in The Federalist with reference to the election of Members of Congress, Hamilton firmly stated that "[t]he qualifications of the persons who may . . . exist chosen . . . are defined and stock-still in the constitution; and are unalterable by the legislature." 3 Until the Ceremonious State of war, the outcome was not raised, the but actions taken by either House befitting to the idea that the qualifications for membership could not exist enlarged past statute or practice.iv But in the passions angry by the fratricidal conflict, Congress enacted a law requiring its members to take an adjuration that they had never been disloyal to the National Authorities.5 Several persons were refused seats past both Houses because of charges of disloyalty,six and thereafter House do, and Senate practice too, was erratic.seven Only in Powell 5. McCormack ,8 it was conclusively established that the qualifications listed in clause 2 are exclusive9 and that Congress could non add to them by excluding Members-elect non meeting the boosted qualifications.10

Powell was excluded from the 90th Congress on grounds that he had asserted an unwarranted privilege and immunity from the process of a state court, that he had wrongfully diverted Business firm funds for his own uses, and that he had fabricated faux reports on the expenditures of foreign currency.11 The Court determination that he had been wrongfully excluded proceeded in the master from the Courtroom's analysis of historical developments, the Convention debates, and textual considerations. This process led the Court to conclude that Congress's power nether Article I, § 5 to gauge the qualifications of its Members was limited to ascertaining the presence or absence of the continuing qualifications prescribed in Article I, § 2, cl. two, and perhaps in other express provisions of the Constitution.12 The conclusion followed because the English language parliamentary practice and the colonial legislative do at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, afterwards some earlier deviations, had settled into a policy that exclusion was a power exercisable only when the Fellow member-elect failed to meet a continuing qualification,thirteen because in the Ramble Convention the Framers had defeated provisions allowing Congress by statute either to create property qualifications or to create additional qualifications without limitation,fourteen 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.xv

Further, the Court observed that the early exercise of Congress, with many of the Framers serving, was consistently limited to the view that exclusion could be exercised but with regard to a Fellow member-elect failing to meet a qualification expressly prescribed in the Constitution. Non until the Civil War did reverse precedents appear, and later practice was mixed.sixteen Finally, even were the intent of the Framers less articulate, said the Court, information technology would still be compelled to interpret the power to exclude narrowly. "A fundamental principle of our representative commonwealth is, in Hamilton's words, 'that the people should choose whom they please to govern them.' 2 Elliot'southward Debates 257. As Madison pointed out at the Convention, this principle is undermined every bit much by limiting whom the people 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 ability to be exercised under the guise of judging qualifications, would exist to ignore Madison's warning, borne out in the Wilkes case and some of Congress's own post-Civil War exclusion cases, against 'vesting an improper and dangerous ability in the Legislature.' " 17 Thus, the Courtroom appears to say, to allow the Business firm to exclude Powell on this basis of qualifications of its ain choosing would impinge on the interests of his constituents in effective participation in the electoral procedure, an involvement which could exist protected by a narrow interpretation of Congressional ability.18

The result in Powell had been foreshadowed when the Courtroom held that the exclusion of a Fellow member-elect by a state legislature because of objections he had uttered to sure national policies constituted a violation of the First Amendment and was void.19 In the course of that decision, the Court denied state legislators the power to wait backside the willingness of any legislator to take the oath to support the Constitution of the United states, prescribed past Article VI, cl. three, to test his sincerity in taking information technology.twenty 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 be abused in behalf of political, religious or other orthodoxies.21 The Start Amendment property and the belongings with regard to testing the sincerity with which the oath of part is taken is no doubt equally applicable to the United States Congress as to state legislatures.

However much Congress may have deviated from the principle that the qualifications listed in the Constitution are sectional when the issue has been congressional enlargement of those qualifications, information technology has been compatible in rejecting efforts by u.s. to enlarge the qualifications. Thus, the House in 1807 seated a Member-elect who was challenged as not being in compliance with a state police force imposing a twelve-calendar month residency requirement in the district, rather than the federal requirement of being an inhabitant of the state at the time of election; the country requirement, the House resolved, was unconstitutional.22 Similarly, both the Business firm 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 property detail state offices.

The Supreme Court reached the same conclusion as to country power, albeit by a surprisingly shut 5-four vote, in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. five. Thornton .23 Arkansas, along with twenty-two other states, all but two by citizen initiatives, had limited the number of terms that Members of Congress may serve. In striking down the Arkansas term limits, the Court determined that the Constitution's qualifications clauses24 found sectional qualifications for Members that may not be added to either by Congress or the states.25 6 years later, the Courtroom relied on Thornton to invalidate a Missouri constabulary requiring that labels be placed on ballots alongside the names of congressional candidates who had "overlooked voters' instruction on term limits" or declined to pledge support for term limits.26

Both majority 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 u.s. in the nation's early years,27 and these differences over text, creation, and exercise derived from disagreement about the key principle underlying the Constitution's adoption.

In the dissent's view, the Constitution was the result of the resolution of the peoples of the separate states to create the National Regime. The conclusion to be drawn from this was that the peoples in the states agreed to surrender but those powers expressly forbidden them and those limited powers that they had delegated to the Federal Regime expressly or past necessary implication. They retained all other powers and still retain them. Thus, "[westward]here the Constitution is silent virtually the exercise of a particular power—that is, where the Constitution does non speak either expressly or by necessary implication—the Federal Regime lacks that power and the States bask it." 28 The Constitution'south silence every bit to authority to impose additional qualifications meant that this ability resides in the states.

The majority's views were radically dissimilar. Subsequently the adoption of the Constitution, us had two kinds of powers: reserved powers that they had earlier the founding and that were non surrendered to the Federal Government, and those powers delegated to them by the Constitution. It followed that the states could take no reserved powers with respect to the Federal Regime. "As Justice Story recognized, 'the states can exercise no powers any, which exclusively leap out of the existence of the national regime, which the constitution does non delegate to them. . . . No state tin say, that it has reserved, what it never possessed.'" 29 The states could not before the founding accept possessed powers to legislate respecting the Federal Government, and, considering the Constitution did not delegate to u.s.a. the power to prescribe qualifications for Members of Congress, the states did not take whatsoever such ability.xxx

Evidently, the opinions in this case reflect more than a determination on this item dispute. They rather stand for conflicting philosophies within the Court respecting the scope of national power in relation to u.s., an event at the core of many controversies today.

Footnotes

1

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

two

1 Hinds' Precedents of the Business firm of Representatives § 418 (1907); 79 Cong. Rec. 9841–42 (1935); cf. ane Hinds, supra note 2, at § 429.

iii

No. 60 (J. Cooke ed. 1961), 409. See too ii J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Us §§ 623–27 (1833) (relating to the power of usa to add qualifications).

iv

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

five

Act of July two, 1862, 12 Stat. 502. Note also the disqualification written into § 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

6

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

7

In 1870, the House excluded a Fellow member-elect who had been re-elected afterwards resigning earlier in the same Congress when expulsion proceedings were instituted against him for selling appointments to the Military Academy. Id. at § 464. A Member-elect was excluded in 1899 because of his practice of polygamy, id. at 474–80, but the Senate refused, after adopting a dominion requiring a 2-thirds vote, to exclude a Fellow member-elect on those grounds. Id. at §§ 481–483. The House twice excluded a socialist Member-elect in the wake of World State of war I on allegations of disloyalty. 6 Cannon's Precedents of the Firm of Representatives §§ 56–58 (1935). Meet also S. Rep. No. 1010, 77th Congress, second sess. (1942), and R. Hupman, Senate Election, Expulsion and Censure Cases From 1789 to 1960, 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 one, 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.Due south. 779 (1995), both past the Court in its holding that the qualifications fix out in the Constitution are sectional and may not be added to by either Congress or united states of america, id. at 787–98, and past the dissenters, who would concord that Congress, for different reasons could not add to qualifications, although the states could. Id. at 875–76.

9

The Court declined to reach the question whether the Constitution in fact does impose other qualifications. 395 U.S. at 520 n.41 (possibly Article I, § iii, cl. seven, disqualifying persons impeached, Article I, § 6, cl. two, incompatible offices, and § 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment). It is also possible that the oath provision of Article VI, cl. 3, could be considered a qualification. See Bond five. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 129–131 (1966).

10

395 U.S. at 550 .

11

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

12

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

thirteen

395 U.S. at 522–31 .

fourteen

395 U.S. at 532–39 .

15

395 U.Due south. at 539–41 .

sixteen

395 U.Southward. at 541–47 .

17

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

xviii

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

19

Bond 5. Floyd, 385 U.Due south. 116 (1966).

20

385 U.South. at 129–31, 132, 135 .

21

385 U.S. at 135 n.xiii .

22

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

23

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

24

Article I, § two, cl. 2, provides that a person may qualify as a Representative if she is at to the lowest degree 25 years one-time, has been a Usa denizen for at least seven years, and is an inhabitant, at the time of the election, of the country in which she is called. The qualifications established for Senators, Article I, § three, cl. 3, are an age of 30 years, 9 years' citizenship, and beingness 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.S. at 845 .

26

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

27

See Sullivan, Dueling Sovereignties: U.S. Term Limits, Inc. 5. Thornton, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 78 (1995).

28

514 U.S. at 848 (Justice Thomas dissenting). Come across mostly id. at 846–65.

29

514 U.South. at 802 .

xxx

514 U.S. at 798–805 . See also 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 take preceded the Constitution and been reserved to us, and the election labels were not valid exercise of the ability granted past Article I, § 4 to regulate the "style" of holding 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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