Page:Recall of Legislators and the Removal of Members of Congress from Office.pdf/8



Constitutional History
The United States Constitution does not provide for or authorize the recall of United States officials such as United States Senators, Representatives to Congress, or the President or Vice President of the United States, and thus no United States Senator or Member of the House of Representatives has ever been recalled in the history of the United States. One historian, using the term “recall” in an apparent ironic, or at least a non-legal sense, has reported on the alleged “recall” of Senator John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts by the state legislature in 1808. Worthington C. Ford, “The Recall of John Quincy Adams in 1808,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 45 (October 1911-June 1912) 354-375. However, in fact, the newly elected Massachusetts legislature, with a new majority of Federalists angered over Adams’ support of President Jefferson and his Republican policies, voted “to elect a Senator of the United States to take my place after the ensuing 3d of March,” that is, at the end of the current term of Senator Adams. Id. at 364, citing Adams,, at 202. Not being satisfied with merely choosing his successor, the legislature proceeded to “instruct” their Senators to vote a particular way, “instructions which Adams could not fulfil (sic) [sic] without sacrificing his opinions and self-respect.” ''IdId. [sic]'' at 364. It was this attempted “instruction,” along with the obvious lack of confidence evidenced in electing a different successor for the next term, which lead to Adams’ resignation from the Senate on June 8. Adams expressly recognized, however, the absence of the authority of a constituent body to recall or to instruct a United States Senator: “The Senate of the United States is a branch of the legislature; and each Senator is a representative, not of a single State, but of the whole Union. His vote is not the vote of his State, but his own individually; and his constituents have not even the power of recalling him, nor of controlling his constitutional action by their instructions.” Ford, supra at 363, quoting Adams,, at 195. As early as 1807, a Senate committee examining the question of the Senate’s duty and broad authority to expel a Member, noted that such duty devolves to the Senate not only because of the express constitutional grant of authority, but also as a practical matter because the Constitution does not allow for a “recall” of elected Members of Congress by the people or the state. The committee noted specifically that the Constitution had set out numerous provisions, qualifications, and requirements for Members of Congress to prevent conflicts of interest and to assure a certain degree of fealty to constituents, but did not give a Member’s constituency the authority to recall such a Member: "The spirit of the Constitution is, perhaps, in no respect more remarkable than in the solicitude which it has manifested to secure the purity of the Legislature by that of the elements of its composition …. Yet, in the midst of all this anxious providence of legislative virtue, it has not authorized the constituent body to recall in any case its representative."

The recall of United States Senators or Representatives had been considered during the time of the drafting of the federal Constitution, but recall provisions were rejected and were not included in the final version of the Constitution sent to the states for ratification. The ratifying process in the states evidences debate over this lack of inclusion of a recall provision. Luther Martin of Maryland, for example, in an address delivered to the Maryland legislature, criticized the proposed Constitution because the Members of Congress “are to pay themselves, out of the treasury of the United States; and are not liable to be recalled during the period for which they are Rh