Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence (4 page)

The framers of the Constitution stipulated that members of the House of Representatives, the people’s house, should serve relatively short terms of only two years, after which they would be required to seek reelection should they wish to continue to represent their state. The delegates could not agree on who should be allowed to vote for members of the House of Representatives, so they left the matter of voting requirements up to the state legislatures, which had up to that time set the qualifications for voters in each of the states. In 1787 all the states except New Jersey (which briefly permitted females to vote) limited the franchise to “free men” (a term usually interpreted to exclude free blacks) and most required that voters own at least some form of property. By the 1820s, most states had opened up the franchise to free white males regardless of whether they owned property. Subsequent amendments—the Fifteenth, prohibiting the denial of the franchise on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”; the Nineteenth, enfranchising women; and the Twenty-sixth, establishing a uniform voting age of eighteen—served to create a common national standard for voting in federal elections.

The requirement that members of the House of Representatives reside in the state in which they were chosen reflected the belief that representatives, if they are to serve the people who elect them, must have close and meaningful ties to the communities in which those people live.

The “three fifths of all other Persons” referred to in this section is the result of the infamous “three-fifths compromise,” in which slaves, though not mentioned by name, were to be counted as three-fifths of a person in the apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives as well as in the apportioning of the amount of direct taxes to be paid by each state. The three-fifths ratio was a purely arbitrary one. It was a consequence of a fundamental contradiction that the Convention delegates were unable to resolve: slaves were human beings, but by the laws of most states they were also regarded as property. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery rendered this portion of Article I, Section 2 null and void.

Although the original Constitution laid down a formula for representation based on population (and “three fifths of all other Persons”), none of the delegates to the 1787 Convention really knew what the actual population of each of the states was. The initial apportionment of representation was merely a guess, but the Constitution did provide for a census of the population to be taken every ten years, a practice that began in 1790 and has continued to the present day.

The “sole Power of Impeachment” referred only to the first step—the equivalent of an indictment or bringing to trial—in the removal of a federal official. The grounds for impeachment set down in Article II, Section 4—“Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors”—have been subject to widely varying interpretations.

The Senate, as the “upper house,” was conceived as a more deliberative body, whose members would be comprised of the most virtuous and knowledgeable citizens in the land. The framers of the Constitution believed that Senators should therefore serve longer terms in order that they might be better insulated from the immediate pressures of public opinion. One of the means by which Senators would be protected from popular whims was to provide for an indirect method for their election, with the legislatures of the individual states being given the power over such election. The provision for staggered terms of service was designed to prevent sudden, convulsive turnover in the membership of the Senate.

Consistent with the view that the members of the Senate were expected to possess superior knowledge and experience, the minimum age of Senators was set at thirty, and the length of time after becoming a citizen nine years, as opposed to twenty-five years of age and seven years of citizenship for members of the House of Representatives.

The framers of the Constitution were aware of the necessity of providing for a vice president, who would assume the president’s duties in the event of his death, disability, or removal, but they had a hard time thinking of any other functions the vice president might perform. The provision of Article I, Section 2, designating the vice president as the presiding officer of the Senate, is the only item in the Constitution that speaks to the limited official duties of the vice president.

The Senate, as the more deliberative of the two legislative bodies, was given the responsibility of trying impeachment cases. Seeking to reinforce the principle of separation of powers, the Constitution designates the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court as the person who would preside over an impeachment trial of the president.

As was the case in the instance of voting requirements, the framers of the Constitution were content to leave the matter of when congressional elections should be held to the state governments.

The stipulation that Congress should assemble on the first Monday in December was altered by the passage of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933. The practical effect of the original terms of Article I, Section 4, was to delay the seating of new members of Congress until March, creating a period of months during which a lame-duck Congress would be in session. Improvements in transportation and communications made it possible, and desirable, to move the stipulated time of the meeting of Congress to January 3.

The items in Article I, Section 5, giving each branch of the legislature control over its own proceedings, reflect a long-standing desire, dating back to the gradual evolution of the English parliament as a legislative body with powers independent of those of the king, to preserve the independence of the legislature from executive encroachment. This section of the Constitution also encourages openness in the publication and dissemination of the proceedings of Congress.