3 Requirements to Be a Member of House of Representatives

Article I, Section ii, Clause 2:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall non have attained to the Age of xx v Years, and been seven Years a Denizen of the United States, and who shall non, when elected, exist an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

A question much disputed but now seemingly settled is whether a condition of eligibility must exist at the time of the election or whether information technology is sufficient that eligibility exist when the Member-elect presents himself to have the oath of office. Although the linguistic communication of the clause expressly makes residency in the state a condition at the time of election, it now appears established in congressional practice that the age and citizenship qualifications need simply exist met when the Member-elect is to be sworn.i Thus, persons elected to either the House of Representatives or the Senate before attaining the required age or term of citizenship have been admitted every bit soon equally 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 . . . be chosen . . . are defined and fixed in the constitution; and are unalterable by the legislature." iii Until the Civil War, the issue was not raised, the only deportment taken by either Firm conforming to the idea that the qualifications for membership could non be enlarged by statute or exercise.4 Merely 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 past both Houses considering of charges of disloyalty,half-dozen and thereafter House practise, and Senate practice too, was erratic.7 But in Powell v. McCormack ,8 it was conclusively established that the qualifications listed in clause 2 are exclusive9 and that Congress could not add together to them by excluding Members-elect not coming together the additional qualifications.x

Powell was excluded from the 90th Congress on grounds that he had asserted an unwarranted privilege and immunity from the process of a land court, that he had wrongfully diverted Business 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 master from the Courtroom's assay of historical developments, the Convention debates, and textual considerations. This process led the Court to conclude that Congress'due south power under Article I, § 5 to approximate 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 perhaps in other express provisions of the Constitution.12 The conclusion followed because the English parliamentary do and the colonial legislative exercise at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, later some earlier deviations, had settled into a policy that exclusion was a power exercisable only when the Member-elect failed to meet a standing qualification,13 considering 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 because 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.15

Further, the Court observed that the early on practise of Congress, with many of the Framers serving, was consistently limited to the view that exclusion could exist exercised only with regard to a Fellow member-elect failing to meet a qualification expressly prescribed in the Constitution. Not until the Civil War did reverse precedents appear, and later practice was mixed.16 Finally, fifty-fifty were the intent of the Framers less articulate, said the Court, information technology would still exist compelled to interpret the power to exclude narrowly. "A central principle of our representative democracy is, in Hamilton's words, 'that the people should choose whom they delight 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 select every bit by limiting the franchise itself. In apparent agreement with this bones philosophy, the Convention adopted his proffer limiting the power to miscarry. To let substantially that same power to be exercised under the guise of judging qualifications, would be to ignore Madison's alarm, borne out in the Wilkes case and some of Congress's own mail service-Civil War exclusion cases, confronting 'vesting an improper and dangerous power in the Legislature.' " 17 Thus, the Court appears to say, to allow the Firm to exclude Powell on this footing of qualifications of its own choosing would impinge on the interests of his constituents in effective participation in the electoral process, an interest which could be protected by a narrow estimation of Congressional power.xviii

The event in Powell had been foreshadowed when the Court held that the exclusion of a Member-elect by a state legislature because of objections he had uttered to certain national policies constituted a violation of the First Subpoena and was void.19 In the course of that decision, the Courtroom denied state legislators the power to look behind the willingness of whatsoever legislator to take the oath to support the Constitution of the United states of america, prescribed by Article Six, cl. iii, to test his sincerity in taking information technology.xx The unanimous Court noted the views of Madison and Hamilton on the exclusivity of the qualifications set out in the Constitution and alluded to Madison's view that the unfettered discretion of the legislative co-operative to exclude members could be abused in behalf of political, religious or other orthodoxies.21 The First Amendment holding and the belongings with regard to testing the sincerity with which the oath of office is taken is no doubt as applicative to the United States Congress every bit 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, it has been uniform in rejecting efforts by usa to enlarge the qualifications. Thus, the House in 1807 seated a Fellow member-elect who was challenged as not being in compliance with a country constabulary imposing a twelve-month residency requirement in the district, rather than the federal requirement of being an inhabitant of the land 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 particular country disqualifications on eligibility, such as running for Congress while holding particular state offices.

The Supreme Court reached the same conclusion equally to state power, admitting by a surprisingly close 5-4 vote, in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. five. Thornton .23 Arkansas, along with 20-two other states, all only two by citizen initiatives, had limited the number of terms that Members of Congress may serve. In striking downwardly the Arkansas term limits, the Courtroom determined that the Constitution'southward qualifications clauses24 found exclusive qualifications for Members that may non be added to either by Congress or the states.25 Six years later, the Court relied on Thornton to invalidate a Missouri law requiring that labels be placed on ballots alongside the names of congressional candidates who had "disregarded voters' educational activity 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 united states in the nation's early years,27 and these differences over text, creation, and exercise derived from disagreement about the fundamental principle underlying the Constitution'southward adoption.

In the dissent's view, the Constitution was the effect of the resolution of the peoples of the carve up states to create the National Government. The determination to be fatigued 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 Government expressly or by necessary implication. They retained all other powers and still retain them. Thus, "[w]here the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power—that is, where the Constitution does not speak either expressly or by necessary implication—the Federal Government lacks that power and the states enjoy information technology." 28 The Constitution's silence as to authority to impose additional qualifications meant that this power resides in u.s.a..

The majority's views were radically different. After the adoption of the Constitution, usa 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. It followed that us could take no reserved powers with respect to the Federal Government. "As Justice Story recognized, 'the states tin practice no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the national government, which the constitution does not delegate to them. . . . No land can say, that it has reserved, what it never possessed.'" 29 Usa could not before the founding have possessed powers to legislate respecting the Federal Regime, and, because the Constitution did not delegate to u.s.a. the ability to prescribe qualifications for Members of Congress, the states did not accept whatsoever such power.30

Evidently, the opinions in this case reverberate more than than a conclusion on this particular dispute. They rather stand for conflicting philosophies within the Court respecting the telescopic of national ability in relation to the states, an upshot at the core of many controversies today.

Footnotes

ane

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

two

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

3

No. sixty (J. Cooke ed. 1961), 409. Encounter also 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §§ 623–27 (1833) (relating to the ability of u.s. to add qualifications).

four

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

v

Act of July 2, 1862, 12 Stat. 502. Note as well the disqualification written into § 3 of the Fourteenth Subpoena.

6

ane Hinds' Precedents of the Business firm 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 War machine 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 two-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 Earth State of war I on allegations of disloyalty. 6 Cannon's Precedents of the House of Representatives §§ 56–58 (1935). Encounter also S. Rep. No. 1010, 77th Congress, 2nd sess. (1942), and R. Hupman, Senate Ballot, Expulsion and Censure Cases From 1789 to 1960, S. Doc. No. 71, 87th Congress, 2d sess. (1962), 140 (dealing with the try to exclude Senator Langer of Northward Dakota).

eight

395 U.South. 486 (1969). The Courtroom divided eight to i, Justice Stewart dissenting on the ground that the case was moot. Powell's continuing validity was affirmed in U.Due south. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), both by the Court in its holding that the qualifications fix out in the Constitution are exclusive and may non be added to by either Congress or usa, id. at 787–98, and by the dissenters, who would concur that Congress, for unlike reasons could non 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.South. at 520 n.41 (possibly Commodity I, § 3, cl. 7, disqualifying persons impeached, Commodity I, § 6, cl. 2, incompatible offices, and § 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment). It is likewise possible that the oath provision of Commodity Half dozen, cl. 3, could exist considered a qualification. See Bond five. Floyd, 385 U.S. 116, 129–131 (1966).

10

395 U.South. at 550 .

eleven

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

12

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

xiii

395 U.S. at 522–31 .

14

395 U.S. at 532–39 .

15

395 U.S. at 539–41 .

16

395 U.S. at 541–47 .

17

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

xviii

The protection of the voters' interest in existence represented by the person of their choice is thus analogized to their constitutionally secured right to cast a ballot and have information technology counted in general elections, Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884), and in primary elections, U.s. 5. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 (1941), to bandage a ballot undiluted in strength because of unequally populated districts, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. ane (1964), and to cast a vote for candidates of their selection unfettered by onerous restrictions on candidate qualification for the ballot. Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968).

nineteen

Bond five. Floyd, 385 U.South. 116 (1966).

20

385 U.S. at 129–31, 132, 135 .

21

385 U.S. at 135 northward.13 .

22

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

23

514 U.Southward. 779 (1995). The majority 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 Main Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor and Scalia. Id. at 845.

24

Article I, § ii, cl. 2, provides that a person may authorize equally a Representative if she is at to the lowest degree 25 years old, has been a United States denizen for at least 7 years, and is an inhabitant, at the time of the election, of the state in which she is chosen. The qualifications established for Senators, Article I, § three, cl. 3, are an historic period of 30 years, 9 years' citizenship, and existence an inhabitant of the state at the time of election.

25

The four-Justice dissent argued that while Congress has no power to increase qualifications, u.s. do. 514 U.S. at 845 .

26

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

27

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

28

514 U.S. at 848 (Justice Thomas dissenting). See generally id. at 846–65.

29

514 U.S. at 802 .

30

514 U.South. at 798–805 . See also id. at 838–45 (Justice Kennedy concurring). The Court practical similar reasoning in Melt 5. Gralike, 531 U.South. 510, 522–23 (2001), invalidating election 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 united states of america, and the ballot labels were not valid practice of the power granted past 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