Can a Congressman Be Removed From House of Representatives

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of 2 thirds, expel a Member."
—Article one, department 5, clause 2

The Constitution grants the House wide power to subject area its Members for acts that range from criminal misconduct to violations of internal House Rules. While the constitutional say-so to punish a Fellow 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 institution and to preserve the dignity of its proceedings.

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

Fernando Wood stood at the Speaker's rostrum to be censured for /tiles/non-drove/2/2009_130_001crop_wood_censure.xml Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
Most this object
Tammany Hall Democrat Fernando Forest stood at the Speaker'southward rostrum to exist censured for "unparliamentary language" in 1868 during the 40th Congress. No stranger to inflammatory spoken communication, Wood reportedly had referred to a slice of legislation every bit "a monstrosity, a measure out of the most infamous acts of this infamous Congress."

These are non the only penalties which the Business firm may levy on its Members. Beginning with the creation of a formal ethics process in the belatedly 1960s, the Committee on Ethics (which for many years was called the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct) has had the power to result a formal "Letter of Reproval." The Ideals Committee may also opt to register its disapproval of a particular action using more informal means. Committee rules, likewise every bit the rules of the private party caucuses, provide other ways of subject. For instance, Members may likewise be fined, stripped of committee leadership positions and seniority, or deprived of other privileges depending on the infractions.

Expulsion

The sternest course of penalisation that the House has imposed on its Members is expulsion, an action which it has used only five times in more than 2 centuries.

The Constitution empowers both the House and the Senate to expel a sitting Fellow member who engages in "hell-raising Behaviour," requiring a two-thirds vote of those nowadays and voting in the chamber to which the Member belongs. As these are internal matters, neither the Business firm nor the Senate requires the concurrence of the other sleeping accommodation to expel 1 of its own Members.

In devising this framework, the Constitutional Convention drew upon British legislative tradition as well as nigh 175 years of precedent in the colonial assemblies in North America. Other than the 2-thirds requirement, however, the Framers left information technology up to the Firm and Senate to determine their own rules and the type of behavior that might warrant expulsion from their respective chambers.

Despite this broad grant of authority, the Framers set up 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 broad discretion to human activity in such cases, it has demonstrated corking deference to the peoples' choice of their Representatives. One measure of that restraint is that the House 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 tape of improper conduct.1

Thomas Nast Cartoon reacting to the Credit Mobilier scandal /tiles/non-drove/n/nast_credit_mobilier_2014_141_000.xml Collection of the U.S. Firm of Representatives
About this object
This 1873 Harper'southward Weekly cartoon 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 office for personal gain. Cartoonist Thomas Nast decried the widespread graft, implying that the multitude of resolutions that condemned corruption and buried the House rostrum were insincere attempts at reform.

Expulsion has traditionally been reserved every bit penalization for only the most reprehensible behave or crimes such as treasonous acts against the government. The first three individuals expelled from the House—Missourians John B. Clark and John Due west. Reid, and Henry C. Burnett of Kentucky—took upward arms for the Confederacy during the Civil War. In the modern era, expulsion has been used on two other occasions, both of which involved egregious violations of criminal constabulary and/or flagrant abuses of function.

While expulsion has been used sparingly, it should be noted that some Members who faced imminent expulsion from the Firm have chosen to resign instead. Two Members who sold appointments to U.Due south. armed services academies shortly afterward the Civil War, Due 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 House still censured both men, even after their resignations.

Others lost their seats in subsequent elections before the House took formal activeness. The Framers anticipated this possibility and, in part, used it to rationalize the House's 2-yr election cycle. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57, "the Business firm of Representatives is so constituted every bit to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the style of their height can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to conceptualize the moment when their power is to finish, when their exercise of information technology is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; in that location forever to remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall accept established their title to a renewal of it."2 Run across a list of Members who have been expelled from the House of Representatives.

Censure

While censure as well derives from the aforementioned constitutional clause, information technology is not a term the Framers expressly mentioned.3

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

Decades before the House commencement expelled Members information technology contemplated censure to register its deep disapproval of a Fellow member's beliefs. Early in its being, the Business firm considered (but did non 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 later declined to expel or censure the Vermonter, Griswold sought to defend his honor by caning him at his desk-bound. Consumed by this "affray," the House created a Commission on Privileges to investigate the incident though information technology ultimately refused to recommend a punishment after both men promised "to continue the peace."

Peculiarly during the nineteenth century, when politicians fought duels over affronts to their honor and reputation, censure emerged as a means to finer challenge a Member's integrity. From the early 1830s to the late 1860s, the Business firm censured individuals for unacceptable behave that occurred largely during floor contend. The first fourth dimension the House censured one of its ain occurred in 1832 when William Stanbery of Ohio insulted Speaker Andrew Stevenson of Virginia. Merely since these transgressions did not rise to the level of expulsion, House practice required a simple majority vote on a resolution by those Members present and voting.

Tally Sheet for the vote to expel Representative Preston Brooks /tiles/not-drove/50/lfp_035imgpres1.xml Epitome courtesy of the National Athenaeum and Records Administration
About this record
In July 1856, the House voted on a motion to expel Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina from Congress for his violent attack confronting Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. As the higher up vote tally sheet indicates, the House did not 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 Firm notably rebuked several Gilded Age Members for blackmail, well-nigh nineteenth-century censures were handed downwardly for unparliamentary behavior, usually defamatory or insulting statements made against a House colleague. In 1856, in the wake of peradventure the about well-known episode of congressional violence, the House censured Laurence Keitt for assisting fellow S Carolinian Preston Brooks as he brutally assaulted Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane on the Senate Flooring; the House failed to muster the two-thirds vote necessary to miscarry Brooks. Assertive 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 own vacancies. A decade later, Lovell Rousseau of Kentucky suffered the censure punishment for caning Iowan Josiah Grinnell later on the ii exchanged insults near their respective military service in the Civil War. Like Keitt, Rousseau resigned his seat after the indignity of existence censured only to have constituents re-elect him. Come across a list of Members who have been censured by the House of Representatives.

Reprimand

Like censure, the word reprimand does not announced in the Constitution. And its significant has changed over time. For much of the Business firm'south history, in fact well into the twentieth century, the word reprimand was used interchangeably with censure. For instance, the censure resolution passed against Thomas 50. Blanton in 1921 directed him to the bar of the House to receive its "reprimand and censure."

The modern employ of the term reprimand evolved relatively recently, following the creation of a formal ethics procedure in the tardily 1960s.iv A reprimand registers the Business firm's disapproval for conduct that warrants a less severe rebuke than censure. Typically, in modern practice, the Ethics Committee recommends a reprimand (every bit it does in the case of censure) by submitting a resolution accompanied with a report to the full House. Reprimand requires a simple majority vote on the resolution brought before the Firm and, in some instances, may exist implemented simply by the adoption of the committee report. A reprimanded Member is not required to stand in the well of the Business firm to accept a verbal admonishment. Since the outset case of the House taking such action in 1976, a total of 11 individuals have been reprimanded by the House. See a list of Members who have been reprimanded by the House of Representatives.

For Farther Reading

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

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

_______. "Summary of Activities," http://ethics.house.gov/reports/summary-activities (accessed 20 March 2017).

Congressional Record, Firm, 67th Cong., 1st sess. (27 October 1921): 6880–6896.

Hinds, Asher C. Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United states of america, Vol. ii (Washington, DC: Government Printing Role, 1907): Affiliate 52 §1642–1643: 1114–1116.

Maskell, Jack H., "Discipline 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 W. Johnson. Parliament & Congress: Representation & Scrutiny in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Oxford Academy Press, 2014): 517–546.

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

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