115th Congress, 1st Session - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - House Document No. 115–62 PRECEDENTS OF THE United States House of Representatives By CHARLES W. JOHNSON, III, J.D. Parliamentarian of the House, 1994–2004 JOHN V. SULLIVAN, J.D. Parliamentarian of the House, 2004–2012 THOMAS J. WICKHAM, Jr., J.D. Parliamentarian of the House, 2012– VOLUME 1 COVERING PRECEDENTS THROUGH THE OPENING DAY OF THE 115TH CONGRESS AND EMPLOYING CITATIONS TO THE RULES AND TO THE HOUSE RULES AND MANUAL OF THAT CONGRESS For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate dec 05 2003 15:02 Dec 20, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 8879 Sfmt 8879 F:\PRECEDIT\WORKING\VOL1WORKING 4474-B VerDate dec 05 2003 15:02 Dec 20, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 8879 Sfmt 8879 F:\PRECEDIT\WORKING\VOL1WORKING 4474-B Preface to New Precedent Series This book marks the inaugural volume in the fourth series of the precedents of the United States House of Representatives. This series continues the efforts of the Office of the Parliamentarian, pursuant to law, to compile and publish the parliamentary precedents of the House. The overarching role of the Office of the Parliamentarian is to facilitate the orderly conduct of business in the House by applying pertinent precedent to each procedural question as it arises, striving always to achieve consistency and regularity in par- liamentary practice. In resolving questions of order, the Speaker and other presiding officers of the House adhere to the jurisprudential principle of stare decisis—a com- mitment to stand by earlier decisions. This fidelity to precedent promotes analytic consistency and procedural predictability, and thereby fosters legitimacy in par- liamentary practice. To quote Lewis Deschler, former Parliamentarian: ‘‘If the prece- dents of the House can be said to have an overriding function, it is to enable the Members to govern themselves democratically and fairly and at the same time exe- cute the will of the majority.’’ The compilation of the parliamentary precedents of the House is as important as any other function of the Office of the Parliamentarian. This compilation process be- gins when parliamentary or procedural events occur on the floor of the House. These events are recorded in the Congressional Record, which is reviewed and notated regu- larly by the Parliamentarian. From these notations, a parliamentary syllabus is pre- pared, stating the substance of the decision and its legal rationale in suitably narrow terms. These ‘‘headnotes’’ are then logged in an internal database and compiled annu- ally into scrapbooks for use by the Office. Finally, following years of analysis and re- view, the formal precedents are published in works such as this—extracting the most pertinent parliamentary events, and organizing them into a coherent and logical framework. Each precedent is presented with Congressional Record excerpts and an- notated with descriptive procedural narratives that concisely state the applicable legal principles at issue. The published precedents thus represent for the House the most critical element of what Thomas Jefferson referred to in 1800 as the ‘‘parliamen- tary branch of the law.’’ The first series of House precedents, compiling the early precedents of the House from the First Congress through 1907, were published at the beginning of the 20th century in the five–volume work of Asher Hinds. The second series, compiled by Clar- ence Cannon, updated Hinds’ work by publishing precedents from 1908 to 1936 in three additional volumes. The third series was commenced in 1974 by House Parlia- mentarian Lewis Deschler. The Deschler series continued with publications during the tenures of Parliamentarians William H. Brown, Charles W. Johnson III, and John V. Sullivan, with a final volume of the series published in 2013. The Deschler series, made up of 18 volumes, was published over a 35–year period, reflecting a broad span of precedents dependent on the publication date of each individual volume. This fourth series of House precedents will maintain the overall organizational structure of the preceding series. Thus, each chapter in this new series will have a counterpart in the Deschler series, covering the same general subject matter, and will analyze procedural events occurring since the prior publication. The reasoning for this iii VerDate dec 05 2003 15:02 Dec 20, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 8883 Sfmt 8883 F:\PRECEDIT\WORKING\VOL1WORKING 4474-B PREFACE editorial decision is perhaps best illustrated by a quote from Henry H. Smith, a former Journal Clerk of the House, who wrote in 1890 that, ‘‘[U]niformity of arrange- ment of matter in a work of this character is of the first importance, and except for manifest reasons, should not be changed.’’ The series will continue the tradition of earlier volumes by presenting not only binding precedents but also the institutional history of the House. Thus, while the focus will typically be on formal procedural decisions of the Chair, the series will ex- amine a broader range of House proceedings—from parliamentary rulings on discrete points of order to customary usages that attend ceremonial occasions and other non– legislative events. The naming of this series (‘‘Precedents of the United States House of Representa- tives’’) is a movement toward the original convention found in the United States Code (2 U.S.C. § 28) and an acknowledgment of the evolution of the Office of Compilation of Precedents—a division of the Office of the Parliamentarian. The manual record- keeping methods of the 1920s, when the Office of the Parliamentarian first began compiling parliamentary rulings, have given way to the sophisticated tools of the dig- ital age. Paper files and handwritten notations have now been supplanted by an in- ternal electronic database consisting of over 20,000 entries. The completion of the Deschler series and this inaugural volume of the new series would not have been pos- sible without the two editors that anchor the Office of Compilation of Prece- dents—Andrew Neal and Max Spitzer. The contributions of these excellent attorneys to the development of that office and the unyielding drive for consistent analysis and publication of the precedents are gratefully acknowledged. One challenge of this series will be to document the procedural change that has occurred at a rapid pace since the publication of the initial volumes of the Deschler series in the 1970s. Parliamentarian Charles W. Johnson invoked this rapidity in his retirement letter of 2004, following forty years of service in the Office of the Parlia- mentarian. He wrote: ‘‘One need only refer to the prefaces of Hinds, Cannon’s, and Deschler’s Precedents to gain a sense of the extent of the procedural evolution in the House for the first 190 years of the Republic, and then compare with that documented history the nature and pace of more recent changes, to understand the enormity of contemporary developments.’’ Among the most fundamental developments has been the expanding role of ad hoc special orders of business reported by the Committee on Rules in the daily business of the House. The growth in the use of special rules to provide for the consideration of otherwise privileged business and the increased structuring of those rules will be documented in this series. The series will also detail the decreased use of conference committees as a means of resolving differences between the legislative products of the two chambers. Evolving transparency requirements will be addressed as the rules of the House have been modified to account for technological change—for example, the ability to make House documents available to Members and staff in electronic form. The series will also illuminate continuity of Congress provisions adopted after the ter- rorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Finally, the goal of this series is to preserve a foundation for future parliamentary decision–making in the body closest to the people in our Federal government. The iv VerDate dec 05 2003 15:02 Dec 20, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 8883 Sfmt 8883 F:\PRECEDIT\WORKING\VOL1WORKING 4474-B PREFACE highly–organized structure and illustrated citations will guide the sophisticated re- searcher of parliamentary procedure and foster the transparency that is an essential element of prudent lawmaking. Through the publication, distribution, and use of this fourth series of precedents, the House continues its commitment to its founding ideals of regularity and consistency in parliamentary practice. THOMAS J. WICKHAM, JR. Parliamentarian DECEMBER 1, 2017 v VerDate dec 05 2003 15:02 Dec 20, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 8883 Sfmt 8883 F:\PRECEDIT\WORKING\VOL1WORKING 4474-B VerDate dec 05 2003 15:02 Dec 20, 2017 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 8883 Sfmt 8883 F:\PRECEDIT\WORKING\VOL1WORKING 4474-B Acknowledgements Acknowledgement is made with appreciation to the staff of the Office of Compila- tion of Precedents, Catherine Moran, Bryan Feldblum, and Parliamentarian Emeritus Charles W. Johnson—and all the staff at the Office of the Parliamentarian—Ethan Lauer, Jason Smith, Anne Gooch, Kyle Jones, Julia Cook, Lloyd Jenkins and Kristen Donahue for their diligent annotation and documentation of the precedents. Assist- ance to this work was provided by details from the Government Publishing Office, Eve