Page:Recall of Legislators and the Removal of Members of Congress from Office.pdf/4

 his report discusses the manner in which a Member of Congress may be removed from office by “expulsion,” and then examines the issue of “recall” of legislators.

The term of office established in the United States Constitution for a United States Senator is six years, and for a Representative in Congress, two years. Under the Constitution and congressional practice, Members of Congress may have their services ended prior to the normal expiration of their constitutional terms of office by their resignation, death, or by action of the house of Congress in which they sit by way of an expulsion, or by a finding that a subsequent public office accepted by a Member is “incompatible” with congressional office and that the Member has consequently vacated his seat in Congress. As noted in the rules and manual of the House of Representatives with respect to the way in which vacancies may be brought about: “Vacancies are caused by death, resignation, declination, withdrawal, or action of the House in declaring a vacancy as existing or causing one by expulsion.”

Although considered in the Federal Convention of 1787, there was never a provision adopted in the United States Constitution for the “recall” of elected federal officials, such as Members of Congress, and thus no Member of the Senate or the House of Representatives has ever been recalled. As noted by the United States Supreme Court, individual states never possessed the original sovereign authority, and thus could not have “reserved” such power under the Tenth Amendment, to unilaterally change the terms, qualifications, and conditions of service of federal officials created in the Constitution. Even the dissenting opinion in the U.S. Term Limits, Tenth Amendment case conceded that once a Member of Congress is elected and seated in the United States Congress, the states have no authority to cut short the constitutionally established term of office of the Member, and that such sitting Members are beyond the control of the individual states “until the next election.”

Expulsion
Members of Congress may be involuntarily removed from office before the normal expiration of their constitutional terms by an “expulsion” from the Senate (if a Senator) or from the House of Representatives (if a Representative) upon a formal vote on a resolution agreed to by two-thirds of the membership of the respective body who are present and voting. The United States Constitution expressly provides at Article I, Section 5, clause 2, that: “Each House may determine Rh