Page:Recall of Legislators and the Removal of Members of Congress from Office.pdf/7

 "In the judgment of your committee, the power of the House to expel or punish by censure a Member for misconduct occurring before his election or in a preceding or former Congress is sustained by the practice of the House, sanctioned by reason and sound policy and in extreme cases is absolutely essential to enable the House to exclude from its deliberations and councils notoriously corrupt men, who have unexpectedly and suddenly dishonored themselves ….

But in considering this question and in arriving at the conclusions we have reached, we would not have you unmindful of the fact that we have been dealing with the question merely as one of power, and it should not be confused with the question of policy also involved. As a matter of sound policy, this extraordinary prerogative of the House, in our judgment, should be exercised only in extreme cases and always with great caution and after due circumspection, and should be invoked with greatest caution where the acts of misconduct complained of had become public previous to and were generally known at the time of the Member’s election. To exercise such power in that instance the House might abuse its high prerogative, and in our opinion might exceed the just limitations of its constitutional authority by seeking to substitute its standards and ideals for the standards and ideals of the constituency of the Member who had deliberately chosen him to be their Representative. The effect of such a policy would tend not to preserve but to undermine and destroy representative government."

The authority to expel has thus been used cautiously, particularly when the institution of Congress might be seen as usurping or supplanting its own institutional judgment for that of the electorate as to the character or fitness for office of someone the people have chosen to represent them in Congress.

Recall
In some states, state legislators and other state or local elected officials may be removed from office before the expiration of their established terms not only by action of the legislature itself through an expulsion (or for executive officers, through an “impeachment” and conviction by the legislature), but also by the voters through a “recall” election procedure. While an expulsion is an internal authority of legislative bodies incident to their general powers over their own proceedings and Members, recall is a special process outside of the legislature itself, exercised by the people through a special election. Recall provisions for state or local officers became popular in the “progressive movement,” particularly in the western and plains states, in the early part of the 20th Century. Rh