What Percent of the House or Senate Does It Take to Expel a Member

"Each Business firm may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of 2 thirds, expel a Member."
—Article 1, section five, clause 2

The Constitution grants the House broad power to discipline its Members for acts that range from criminal misconduct to violations of internal Business firm Rules. While the constitutional authority to punish a Member who engages in "disorderly Behaviour" is intended, in office, as an instrument of private rebuke, information technology serves principally to protect the reputation of the institution and to preserve the dignity of its proceedings.

Over the decades, several forms of discipline accept evolved in the House. The virtually severe type of punishment is expulsion from the House, which is followed past 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 full House.

/tiles/not-collection/ii/2009_130_001crop_wood_censure.xml Collection of the U.S. Business firm of Representatives
Most this object Tammany Hall Democrat Fernando Forest stood at the Speaker'due south rostrum to be censured for "unparliamentary language" in 1868 during the 40th Congress. No stranger to inflammatory speech, Wood reportedly had referred to a piece of legislation equally "a monstrosity, a measure of the well-nigh infamous acts of this infamous Congress."

These are not the only penalties which the House may levy on its Members. Offset with the cosmos of a formal ethics process in the late 1960s, the Commission on Ethics (which for many years was called the Committee on Standards of Official Behave) has had the ability to issue a formal "Letter of Reproval." The Ethics Committee may also opt to register its disapproval of a particular activity using more than informal ways. Commission rules, every bit well equally the rules of the individual party caucuses, provide other means of subject. For case, Members may also be fined, stripped of committee 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 activeness which it has used just v times in more than two centuries.

The Constitution empowers both the Firm and the Senate to expel a sitting Member who engages in "hell-raising Behaviour," requiring a two-thirds vote of those nowadays and voting in the sleeping room to which the Member belongs. Every bit these are internal matters, neither the Firm nor the Senate requires the concurrence of the other bedroom to expel ane of its ain Members.

In devising this framework, the Constitutional Convention drew upon British legislative tradition besides as nearly 175 years of precedent in the colonial assemblies in North America. Other than the ii-thirds requirement, nevertheless, the Framers left it up to the House 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 fix the two-thirds threshold considering such an action would necessarily remove someone who had been elected by the popular vote of his or her constituents. And though the Business firm has wide discretion to act in such cases, it has demonstrated keen deference to the peoples' option of their Representatives. One mensurate of that restraint is that the House has never expelled any Fellow member for conduct that took identify before his or her House service. Nor has the Business firm removed Members for activity in a prior Congress when the electorate insisted on re-electing them to the Business firm despite a tape of improper bear.^one

/tiles/non-collection/northward/nast_credit_mobilier_2014_141_000.xml Drove of the U.S. House of Representatives
About this object This 1873 Harper's Weekly cartoon illustrates the backwash of the Crédit Mobilier scandal. The House investigated the railroad influence scheme and censured ii of its Members—Oakes Ames of Massachusetts and James Brooks of New York—for using their role for personal gain. Cartoonist Thomas Nast decried the widespread graft, implying that the multitude of resolutions that condemned abuse and buried the House rostrum were insincere attempts at reform.

Expulsion has traditionally been reserved as penalisation for but the most reprehensible conduct or crimes such as treasonous acts confronting the authorities. The first three individuals expelled from the House—Missourians John B. Clark and John W. Reid, and Henry C. Burnett of Kentucky—took upward artillery for the Confederacy during the Civil War. In the mod era, expulsion has been used on two other occasions, both of which involved egregious violations of criminal constabulary 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 take chosen to resign instead. Two Members who sold appointments to U.South. armed services academies before long after the Ceremonious War, Southward Carolina's Benjamin Whittemore and North Carolina'due south John DeWeese, resigned their seats before the House voted to miscarry them. Adamant to register its antipathy for their behavior, the Business firm nonetheless censured both men, even after their resignations.

Others lost their seats in subsequent elections before the Business firm took formal action. The Framers anticipated this possibility and, in part, used it to rationalize the Firm's two-year election cycle. Equally James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57, "the House of Representatives is and then constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the manner of their meridian can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to stop, when their exercise 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 faithful discharge of their trust shall take established their title to a renewal of it."² Run into a listing of Members who have been expelled from the House of Representatives.

Censure

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

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

Decades earlier the House first expelled Members information technology contemplated censure to register its deep disapproval of a Member's beliefs. Early in its beingness, the Firm considered (merely 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 accolade by caning him at his desk. Consumed by this "affray," the Firm created a Commission on Privileges to investigate the incident though it ultimately refused to recommend a punishment after both men promised "to keep the peace."

Especially during the nineteenth century, when politicians fought duels over affronts to their laurels and reputation, censure emerged equally a ways to effectively challenge a Member'southward integrity. From the early 1830s to the tardily 1860s, the House censured individuals for unacceptable deport that occurred largely during flooring debate. The commencement time the House censured i of its ain occurred in 1832 when William Stanbery of Ohio insulted Speaker Andrew Stevenson of Virginia. Simply since these transgressions did not rising to the level of expulsion, House do required a uncomplicated majority vote on a resolution by those Members nowadays and voting.

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About this record In July 1856, the Firm voted on a motion to expel Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina from Congress for his trigger-happy attack against Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. Equally the above vote tally sheet indicates, the Business firm 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 House notably rebuked several Gilt Historic period Members for bribery, well-nigh nineteenth-century censures were handed down for unparliamentary behavior, usually defamatory or insulting statements made confronting a House colleague. In 1856, in the wake of possibly the most well-known episode of congressional violence, the Firm censured Laurence Keitt for assisting fellow South 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 ii-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 afterwards, Lovell Rousseau of Kentucky suffered the censure punishment for caning Iowan Josiah Grinnell after the two exchanged insults about their corresponding military service in the Civil War. Like Keitt, Rousseau resigned his seat after the indignity of being censured only to have constituents re-elect him. Run into a listing of Members who have been censured by the Firm of Representatives.

Reprimand

Like censure, the word reprimand does not appear in the Constitution. And its meaning has inverse 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 L. 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 cosmos of a formal ethics procedure in the belatedly 1960s.^four A reprimand registers the Business firm'south disapproval for conduct that warrants a less severe rebuke than censure. Typically, in modern do, the Ethics Commission recommends a reprimand (as it does in the example of censure) by submitting a resolution accompanied with a study to the full House. Reprimand requires a unproblematic majority vote on the resolution brought before the Firm and, in some instances, may be implemented only by the adoption of the committee study. A reprimanded Member is not required to stand in the well of the House to accept a verbal admonishment. Since the starting time case of the House taking such action in 1976, a total of 11 individuals accept been reprimanded past the House. See a list of Members who accept been reprimanded by the House of Representatives.

For Further Reading

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

Committee on Ethics, "Historical Summary of Deport Cases in the Business firm of Representatives, 1798–2004," http://ethics.house.gov/sites/ethics.firm.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 Tape, House, 67th Cong., 1st sess. (27 October 1921): 6880–6896.

Hinds, Asher C. Hinds' Precedents of the Firm of Representatives of the United states, Vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Role, 1907): Chapter 52 §1642–1643: 1114–1116.

Maskell, Jack H., "Discipline of Members," in Donald C. Bacon et al., eds, The Encyclopedia of the Usa Congress Vol. 2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995): 641–646.

McKay, William, and Charles Westward. Johnson. Parliament & Congress: Representation & Scrutiny in the 20-Outset Century (New York: Oxford Academy Press, 2014): 517–546.

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