A Member of the House of Representative Must Be

Article I, Section ii, Clause two:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of 20 5 Years, and been seven Years a Denizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, exist an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall exist chosen.

A question much disputed but at present 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 take the oath of office. Although the linguistic communication of the clause expressly makes residency in the country a condition at the time of election, it at present appears established in congressional practise that the age and citizenship qualifications need but be met when the Member-elect is to be sworn.one Thus, persons elected to either the Firm of Representatives or the Senate before attaining the required age or term of citizenship accept been admitted as presently as they became qualified.ii

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 upshot was not raised, the merely actions taken by either Firm conforming to the idea that the qualifications for membership could non be enlarged by statute or practice.4 Merely in the passions aroused by the fratricidal conflict, Congress enacted a law requiring its members to take an oath that they had never been disloyal to the National Authorities.five Several persons were refused seats past both Houses because of charges of disloyalty,6 and thereafter House do, and Senate do as well, was erratic.7 Just in Powell v. McCormack ,8 it was conclusively established that the qualifications listed in clause two are exclusive9 and that Congress could not add to them past excluding Members-elect not coming together the boosted qualifications.ten

Powell was excluded from the 90th Congress on grounds that he had asserted an unwarranted privilege and immunity from the process of a state courtroom, that he had wrongfully diverted House funds for his own uses, and that he had made false reports on the expenditures of foreign 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 Courtroom to conclude that Congress'south 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. 2, and possibly in other express provisions of the Constitution.12 The conclusion followed because the English language parliamentary practice and the colonial legislative practise at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, later on some earlier deviations, had settled into a policy that exclusion was a power exercisable only when the Fellow member-elect failed to meet a standing qualification,13 because in the Constitutional Convention the Framers had defeated provisions allowing Congress by statute either to create holding qualifications or to create additional qualifications without limitation,14 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 exercise of Congress, with many of the Framers serving, was consistently limited to the view that exclusion could be exercised just with regard to a Member-elect declining to encounter a qualification expressly prescribed in the Constitution. Not until the Civil War did reverse precedents appear, and later exercise was mixed.sixteen Finally, even were the intent of the Framers less clear, said the Court, information technology would even so be compelled to translate the power to exclude narrowly. "A central principle of our representative democracy is, in Hamilton'due south words, 'that the people should choose whom they delight to govern them.' two Elliot'southward Debates 257. As Madison pointed out at the Convention, this principle is undermined as much past limiting whom the people can select as past limiting the franchise itself. In apparent agreement with this bones philosophy, the Convention adopted his suggestion limiting the ability to expel. To permit essentially that same power to be exercised under the guise of judging qualifications, would exist to ignore Madison's warning, borne out in the Wilkes instance and some of Congress's own post-Civil State of war exclusion cases, confronting 'vesting an improper and dangerous power in the Legislature.' " 17 Thus, the Courtroom appears to say, to allow the House 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 involvement which could exist protected by a narrow interpretation of Congressional power.18

The effect in Powell had been foreshadowed when the Court held that the exclusion of a Fellow member-elect past a state legislature considering of objections he had uttered to certain national policies constituted a violation of the Beginning Amendment and was void.xix In the course of that decision, the Court denied state legislators the ability to look behind the willingness of any legislator to take the adjuration to back up the Constitution of the Usa, prescribed past Article VI, cl. 3, to test his sincerity in taking it.twenty 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 branch to exclude members could be abused in behalf of political, religious or other orthodoxies.21 The First Amendment holding and the holding with regard to testing the sincerity with which the oath of office is taken is no dubiousness as applicable to the The states Congress as to country legislatures.

All the same much Congress may accept deviated from the principle that the qualifications listed in the Constitution are exclusive when the issue has been congressional enlargement of those qualifications, it has been uniform in rejecting efforts by the states to enlarge the qualifications. Thus, the House in 1807 seated a Fellow member-elect who was challenged as not being in compliance with a state police force imposing a twelve-month residency requirement in the district, rather than the federal requirement of being an inhabitant of the country at the time of election; the state requirement, the Business firm resolved, was unconstitutional.22 Similarly, both the Firm and Senate have seated other Members-elect who did not meet boosted state qualifications or who suffered particular country disqualifications on eligibility, such as running for Congress while holding particular country offices.

The Supreme Courtroom reached the same determination as to state power, albeit by a surprisingly close 5-4 vote, in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton .23 Arkansas, forth with 20-two other states, all just two by citizen initiatives, had limited the number of terms that Members of Congress may serve. In hitting downwardly the Arkansas term limits, the Court determined that the Constitution's qualifications clauses24 establish exclusive qualifications for Members that may not be added to either by Congress or usa.25 Six years later, the Courtroom relied on Thornton to invalidate a Missouri law requiring that labels be placed on ballots alongside the names of congressional candidates who had "overlooked voters' education 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 virtually the text of the Constitution, the history of its drafting and ratification, and the practices of Congress and u.s.a. 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's adoption.

In the dissent's view, the Constitution was the effect of the resolution of the peoples of the separate states to create the National Government. The conclusion to be fatigued from this was that the peoples in u.s.a. agreed to surrender only those powers expressly forbidden them and those limited powers that they had delegated to the Federal Authorities expressly or past necessary implication. They retained all other powers and still retain them. Thus, "[w]here the Constitution is silent nearly the exercise of a particular ability—that is, where the Constitution does non speak either expressly or by necessary implication—the Federal Government lacks that power and the States enjoy it." 28 The Constitution'southward silence as to authority to impose additional qualifications meant that this ability resides in u.s..

The majority's views were radically dissimilar. After the adoption of the Constitution, the states had 2 kinds of powers: reserved powers that they had before the founding and that were not surrendered to the Federal Authorities, and those powers delegated to them past the Constitution. It followed that the states could have no reserved powers with respect to the Federal Regime. "As Justice Story recognized, 'united states of america tin exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the being of the national authorities, which the constitution does not delegate to them. . . . No land can say, that information technology has reserved, what it never possessed.'" 29 U.s. could not before the founding have possessed powers to legislate respecting the Federal Authorities, and, because the Constitution did not delegate to the states the power to prescribe qualifications for Members of Congress, the states did not have any such ability.30

Evidently, the opinions in this case reflect more than than a decision on this particular dispute. They rather represent conflicting philosophies within the Courtroom respecting the scope of national power in relation to the states, an issue at the core of many controversies today.

Footnotes

1

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

2

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

3

No. 60 (J. Cooke ed. 1961), 409. See likewise ii J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States §§ 623–27 (1833) (relating to the ability of the States to add qualifications).

4

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

5

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

half dozen

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

7

In 1870, the Business firm excluded a Fellow member-elect who had been re-elected after resigning earlier in the same Congress when expulsion proceedings were instituted against him for selling appointments to the Military University. Id. at § 464. A Member-elect was excluded in 1899 because of his practise of polygamy, id. at 474–80, but the Senate refused, later on 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 Fellow member-elect in the wake of Earth State of war I on allegations of disloyalty. six Cannon's Precedents of the House of Representatives §§ 56–58 (1935). Run into too S. Rep. No. 1010, 77th Congress, 2d sess. (1942), and R. Hupman, Senate Ballot, Expulsion and Censure Cases From 1789 to 1960, S. Md. No. 71, 87th Congress, 2d sess. (1962), 140 (dealing with the try to exclude Senator Langer of Northward Dakota).

viii

395 U.S. 486 (1969). The Court divided eight to one, Justice Stewart dissenting on the basis that the case was moot. Powell's continuing validity was affirmed in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. five. Thornton, 514 U.South. 779 (1995), both by the Courtroom in its holding that the qualifications set out in the Constitution are exclusive and may not exist added to by either Congress or the states, id. at 787–98, and by the dissenters, who would hold 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 Commodity I, § 3, cl. 7, disqualifying persons impeached, Article I, § vi, cl. two, incompatible offices, and § 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment). Information technology is besides possible that the oath provision of Article VI, cl. 3, could be considered a qualification. See Bond 5. 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.S. at 489–493 .

12

Powell 5. McCormack, 395 U.Southward. 486, 518–47 (1969).

13

395 U.S. at 522–31 .

14

395 U.S. at 532–39 .

fifteen

395 U.Southward. at 539–41 .

16

395 U.S. at 541–47 .

17

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

eighteen

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

19

Bail 5. Floyd, 385 U.South. 116 (1966).

xx

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

21

385 U.S. at 135 due north.13 .

22

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

23

514 U.Southward. 779 (1995). The bulk was composed of Justice Stevens (writing the stance 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

Commodity I, § ii, cl. 2, provides that a person may qualify as a Representative if she is at least 25 years sometime, has been a United states citizen for at least seven years, and is an inhabitant, at the time of the election, of the country in which she is chosen. The qualifications established for Senators, Article I, § 3, cl. three, are an age of 30 years, nine 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 ability to increase qualifications, u.s. do. 514 U.S. at 845 .

26

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

27

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

28

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

29

514 U.S. at 802 .

30

514 U.S. at 798–805 . See likewise id. at 838–45 (Justice Kennedy concurring). The Court applied similar reasoning in Cook 5. Gralike, 531 U.S. 510, 522–23 (2001), invalidating ballot labels identifying congressional candidates who had not pledged to back up term limits. Because congressional offices arise from the Constitution, the Court explained, no authority to regulate these offices could accept preceded the Constitution and been reserved to the states, and the ballot labels were not valid exercise of the power granted past Article I, § four to regulate the "way" of holding elections. See word 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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