On January 3, 2023 I presume that Nancy Pelosi will have the speaker's gavel until a new speaker is elected. If Republicans cannot get their act together and days go by without anybody winning the Speaker's position, does she remain in the chair for all of that time? What powers if any does she exercise at that time?
My guess would be that since Kevin McCarthy is currently the minority leader in the House, he would automatically become the Speaker of the House until the Republicans hold an election and elect someone else. The seat cannot remain vacant until the Republicans get their house in order, since the Speaker in third in line to the Presidency.
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ReplyDeleteIt's a dicey question. I doubt if Pelosi would take over because, constitutionally, it is an entirely new Congress, starting from scratch. In fact, there is no constitutional office of Speaker. Someone has to organize things when they all show up, and I suspect that there is provision in the House rules somewhere for this, but that's just a guess.
From Art. 1 sec. 2: "The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment." So it is in the Constitution.
ReplyDeleteThe Speaker's term expires at the end of the Congress in which she was elected. A Speaker, upon election, is required to submit a list of Members who would serve as Speaker Pro Tempore should the Speaker be unable to temporarily serve. That list is probably moot in a following term.
I'd assume Hal Rogers or Chris Smith might be elected as Speaker Pro Tempore but this situation could get interesting.
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Careless reading on my part. Thanks for the correction.
Yesterday, the S. Ct. heard arguments raised by legislators of North Carolina, where the State Supreme Court invalidated Congressional district drawing enacted by the N.C. legislature. The N.C. legislature is seeking to resurrect a theory once advanced by J. Rehnquist that the Elections Clause, Article I, Sec. 4, gives the state legislatures unfettered authority, not reviewable by the courts, to determine “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives ….” On its face, the proposition seems ridiculous, in several respects. As Justice Marshall stated in Marbury v. Madison, ultimately it is the courts which state what the law is. If the courts could not review Congressional District lines drawn by state legislatures, whichever party controls the state legislature would have the power to insure that that party will prevail in every election. This would destroy democracy as we know it. Could the drafters of the Constitution have placed within the Constitution itself a suicide pill which would result in the destruction of the democracy the Constitution was intended to preserve? Such an interpretation runs counter to every canon of Constitutional interpretation. J. Alito is responsible for advancing this theory on the Court. He is a loose cannon and has turned out to be the worst judicial nomination in U.S. history.
ReplyDeleteHere a warning to all Insomnians
ReplyDeleteSometimes I have a sleepless night too, like yesterday. By the way, I also owe Professor Wolff's first Kant lecture on Youtube to such a night.
Last night I watched the film "To big to fail" from 2011. Afterwards, also on Youtube, over 2 hours of testimony by Goldman Sachs managers before the "Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Investigations" in 2010.
From this experience, I have two pieces of advice: 1. If you want to sleep, you better count sheep and don't watch movies about the 2008 crisis. 2. if you want to know more about the present, look into the past.
If you take the last point into account, you will understand better why you will have sleepless nights in 2022, because apparently the election of a single senator will decide the well-being of the whole democracy.
Achim,
ReplyDeleteIf your insomniac advice is directed to me, Bing Crosby recommended counting your blessings instead of sheep.
Regarding your last point, I interpret you to be saying that sometime in the United States past history, a single Senator cast a vote which somehow decided the well-being of the U.S. democracy. I have been scratching my head to try to figure out who that Senator from the past might be. The only name I can come up with is Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas, who in 1868 cast the single vote which prevented the impeachment conviction of President Andrew Johnson, a vote which John Kennedy regarded as a profile in courage. Do you have someone else in mind, and if so, please let us know who that is.
P.S.: Am I correct that you reside in Germany, so you would have received my 3:15 A.M. (EST) comment posted above some 7 hours later?
There is no speaker to preside over the election of the next speaker. The speaker is elected by the incoming Congress. Pelosi is the speaker elected by the 117th Congress, so she doesn't have any role as speaker for the 118th Congress. The speaker has to be elected by the Congress, so she can't just continue on in her post after the end of the 117th Congress. She wouldn't have been elected to that post. Nor can McCarthy "automatically" take over as speaker. He wouldn't have been elected to that post. All that to say, there is no speaker of the 118th congress until one is elected. The incoming Congress gets to decide the rules by which they elect the speaker. There have been cases where no candidate got a majority of the votes and the incoming Congress voted to amend the rules so that a candidate could be elected by a plurality. More typically, the representatives just keep voting over and over until a candidate receives a majority.
ReplyDeleteTJ,
ReplyDeleteThank you for that information, which I accept (without knowing precisely what your credentials are). In light of what you have written, if, God forbid, something were to happen to incapacitate President Biden and V.P. Harris before the next Speaker were elected, then, under the Precedential Succession Act, without there being an elected Speaker, the next person in line for succession would be the President pro tempore of the Senate, who at the present time is Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be Leahy because Leahy is the president pro tempore of the 117th congress. He didn't seek reelection, so the president pro tempore of the 118th congress will be Patty Murray
A single senator mattered for organizational reasons. In the 1868 impeachment vote bribery (likely including Ross - I don't believe Kennedy actually wrote the book anyway) was involved. Sadly team acquit out-bribed team convict.
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