What Is a Member of the House of Representatives Called

"Each House may make up one's mind the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."
—Article 1, section 5, clause 2

The Constitution grants the House broad power to discipline its Members for acts that range from criminal misconduct to violations of internal House Rules. While the constitutional say-so to punish a Member who engages in "disorderly Behaviour" is intended, in part, as an instrument of individual rebuke, it serves principally to protect the reputation of the institution and to preserve the nobility of its proceedings.

Over the decades, several forms of discipline take evolved in the House. The most astringent type of punishment is expulsion from the House, which is followed by censure, and finally reprimand. Expulsion, as mandated in the Constitution, requires a 2-thirds majority vote. Censure and reprimand, which evolved through Firm precedent and practice, are imposed by a uncomplicated majority of the full House.

/tiles/non-collection/two/2009_130_001crop_wood_censure.xml Collection of the U.S. Business firm of Representatives
About this object Tammany Hall Democrat Fernando Forest stood at the Speaker'south rostrum to be censured for "unparliamentary language" in 1868 during the 40th Congress. No stranger to inflammatory speech communication, Forest reportedly had referred to a piece of legislation equally "a monstrosity, a measure of the nigh infamous acts of this infamous Congress."

These are not the only penalties which the House 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 Comport) has had the ability to upshot a formal "Letter of the alphabet of Reproval." The Ideals Committee may also opt to register its disapproval of a particular action using more breezy means. Committee rules, as well every bit the rules of the private party caucuses, provide other means of bailiwick. For case, Members may also be fined, stripped of commission leadership positions and seniority, or deprived of other privileges depending on the infractions.

Expulsion

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

The Constitution empowers both the House and the Senate to expel a sitting Member who engages in "disorderly Behaviour," requiring a ii-thirds vote of those nowadays and voting in the chamber to which the Member belongs. Equally these are internal matters, neither the House nor the Senate requires the concurrence of the other chamber to expel one of its own Members.

In devising this framework, the Ramble Convention drew upon British legislative tradition likewise as nearly 175 years of precedent in the colonial assemblies in North America. Other than the ii-thirds requirement, nonetheless, the Framers left it up to the House and Senate to determine their ain rules and the type of beliefs that might warrant expulsion from their respective chambers.

Despite this wide grant of authority, the Framers set the 2-thirds threshold because such an activity would necessarily remove someone who had been elected past the popular vote of his or her constituents. And though the House has wide discretion to act in such cases, it has demonstrated keen 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 earlier 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 record of improper conduct.¹

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About this object This 1873 Harper's 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 abuse and buried the Business firm rostrum were insincere attempts at reform.

Expulsion has traditionally been reserved as punishment for only the nearly reprehensible conduct or crimes such as treasonous acts confronting the government. The beginning iii individuals expelled from the House—Missourians John B. Clark and John W. Reid, and Henry C. Burnett of Kentucky—took up arms for the Confederacy during the Civil State of war. In the mod era, expulsion has been used on two other occasions, both of which involved egregious violations of criminal law and/or flagrant abuses of office.

While expulsion has been used sparingly, it should be noted that some Members who faced imminent expulsion from the House have chosen to resign instead. Two Members who sold appointments to U.Southward. military academies shortly after the Ceremonious War, South Carolina's Benjamin Whittemore and Northward Carolina'southward John DeWeese, resigned their seats before the House voted to miscarry them. Determined to register its contempt for their behavior, the Business firm still censured both men, even after their resignations.

Others lost their seats in subsequent elections before the House took formal action. The Framers predictable this possibility and, in part, used it to rationalize the House's ii-year election cycle. Equally James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57, "the House of Representatives is and so constituted every bit to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Earlier the sentiments impressed on their minds past the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of power, they volition be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to terminate, when their practice of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a true-blue discharge of their trust shall have established their title to a renewal of information technology."ⁱⁱ See a listing of Members who take been expelled from the Business firm of Representatives.

Censure

While censure besides derives from the same constitutional clause, it is not a term the Framers expressly mentioned.³

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

Decades before the Business firm first expelled Members information technology contemplated censure to annals its deep disapproval of a Member'southward behavior. Early in its being, the House 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 after declined to expel or censure the Vermonter, Griswold sought to defend his honor by caning him at his desk. Consumed by this "affray," the House created a Committee on Privileges to investigate the incident though it ultimately refused to recommend a penalization later on both men promised "to keep the peace."

Specially during the nineteenth century, when politicians fought duels over affronts to their honor and reputation, censure emerged equally a means to finer claiming a Fellow member'southward integrity. From the early 1830s to the late 1860s, the House censured individuals for unacceptable carry that occurred largely during floor debate. The offset time the House censured one of its own occurred in 1832 when William Stanbery of Ohio insulted Speaker Andrew Stevenson of Virginia. But since these transgressions did non rise to the level of expulsion, House do required a elementary bulk vote on a resolution past those Members present and voting.

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About this record In July 1856, the Business firm voted on a motion to expel Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina from Congress for his fierce assault against Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Equally the above vote tally sheet indicates, the Firm did not achieve the 2-thirds vote necessary to strip Brooks of his seat, with 121 Members voting to expel him and 95 voting confronting removal.

Indeed, though the House notably rebuked several Gold Age Members for bribery, most nineteenth-century censures were handed downwardly for unparliamentary beliefs, normally defamatory or insulting statements made confronting a Business firm colleague. In 1856, in the wake of possibly the about well-known episode of congressional violence, the Business firm censured Laurence Keitt for profitable fellow South Carolinian Preston Brooks every bit he brutally assaulted Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane on the Senate Floor; the House failed to muster the ii-thirds vote necessary to expel Brooks. Believing that putting the question to their constituents would vindicate them, both Keitt and Brooks resigned their seats and subsequently won the special elections to fill up their own vacancies. A decade later, Lovell Rousseau of Kentucky suffered the censure punishment for caning Iowan Josiah Grinnell after the two exchanged insults about their respective military service in the Ceremonious War. Like Keitt, Rousseau resigned his seat after the indignity of beingness censured only to accept constituents re-elect him. Run into a list of Members who have been censured past the House of Representatives.

Reprimand

Like censure, the word reprimand does non appear in the Constitution. And its significant has changed over fourth dimension. For much of the Firm's 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 modernistic use of the term reprimand evolved relatively recently, following the cosmos of a formal ethics process in the late 1960s.^iv A reprimand registers the House'due south disapproval for bear that warrants a less severe rebuke than censure. Typically, in modern practice, the Ideals Commission recommends a reprimand (as it does in the case of censure) by submitting a resolution accompanied with a report to the total House. Reprimand requires a simple bulk vote on the resolution brought earlier the House and, in some instances, may be implemented simply past the adoption of the committee written report. A reprimanded Fellow member is not required to stand in the well of the House to accept a verbal admonishment. Since the first case of the House taking such action in 1976, a total of xi individuals have been reprimanded by the House. Encounter a list of Members who have been reprimanded by the House of Representatives.

For Farther Reading

Brown, Cynthia, "Expulsion, Censure, Reprimand, and Fine: Legislative Discipline in the House of Representatives," Study No. RL31382, 27 June 2016, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC.

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

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

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

Hinds, Asher C. Hinds' Precedents of the Business firm of Representatives of the U.s.a., Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Regime Printing Part, 1907): Chapter 52 §1642–1643: 1114–1116.

Maskell, Jack H., "Discipline of Members," in Donald C. Salary et al., eds, The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress Vol. two (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995): 641–646.

McKay, William, and Charles W. Johnson. Parliament & Congress: Representation & Scrutiny in the Twenty-Commencement Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 517–546.

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

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