Federal Government, Legislative Branch

Federal Government, Legislative Branch OverviewSenateHouse of Representatives
Overview The legislative branch of the U.S. government—the Congress—is a bicameral legislature composed of the House of Representatives, whose membership is based on proportional representation, and the Senate, made up of two members from each state. This arrangement resulted from a compromise at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 between the representatives of states with large populations and those from small states, who feared being automatically outvoted under a wholly proportional system.

The House of Representatives was modeled on the British House of Commons: Elected directly by the citizens, representatives serve two‐year terms. The Senate, in contrast, was a new creation, designed not only as a body where each state would have an equal number of votes, but also as a check on the popular emotions that might sway House members. To this end, senators were to be older—at least thirty years of age as opposed to twenty‐five for representatives—and thus presumably more mature. To insulate them from popular pressures, senators would serve staggered six‐year terms and be elected by the legislatures of their states instead of directly by the citizens.

Together, the House and Senate are responsible for making all laws, with tax bills originating in the House. Congress also possesses the power to declare war, oversee and investigate the administration of programs initiated by the executive branch, and override presidential vetoes by two‐thirds votes of both houses. In addition, the Senate has sole responsibility for reviewing and approving treaties and confirming presidential nominations. The House has the power to impeach government officials who abuse their office, while the Senate acts as a court to try impeachment cases brought by the House. Conviction by the Senate brings removal from office. Each house also has the power to discipline its own members and to expel a member by a two‐thirds vote.

Until 1794 the Senate met in closed session, while meetings of the House were always open to the public. Although the House had two standing committees as early as 1795, both bodies generally operated with ad hoc committees chosen for each piece of legislation or for a single term until the early 1800s, when both the House and Senate established more permanent standing committees.

The basic structure of the legislative branch has generally remained stable, with only a few changes over time. As new states entered the Union, the membership of both bodies multiplied, from 26 senators in the first Congress to 100 after 1959, and from 65 representatives to 435 since 1911, when the total number of representatives was capped by statute. By the mid–1850s, the House and Senate had outgrown their chambers in the Capitol Building, leading to the addition of large north and south wings to provide spacious new chambers. Down to the first decade of the twentieth century, representatives and senators had little or no office space or staff, but as staff members were hired and more working space was needed, both bodies erected office buildings.

As the twentieth century progressed, the role of the federal government expanded and became more complex, a trend accelerated by the New Deal and World War II. Legislative branch activities kept pace, leading to the hiring of additional staff, until by the 1990s the House had more than ten thousand staff members and the Senate more than six thousand, housed in seven congressional office buildings.

One structural change occurred with ratification in 1913 of the Seventeenth Amendment, which mandated that senators, like members of the House, be elected by direct popular vote. Also important, though less dramatic, was the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1947, which made such “housekeeping” changes as reducing the number of House and Senate committees, consolidating jurisdictions, and authorizing professional staff members for both members and committees.

Although most federal government agencies are part of the executive branch, the legislative branch has created several agencies to serve its particular needs. The Library of Congress, established in 1800, serves as a repository and disseminator of knowledge for the entire nation; the Government Printing Office, set up in 1860, publishes official congressional and other governmental documents; and the General Accounting Office, established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, audits and reviews the actions of federal agencies. In 1974, Congress established its own Congressional Budget Office as an independent source of fiscal information. A congressional Office of Technology Assessment existed from 1972 until it was abolished in 1995.

By the early twenty‐first century, continuing a long-term trend of growing political partisanship, deliberation in both houses of Congress was characterized by acrimony, jockeying for advantage, and a decline in bipartisan cooperation, mutual respect, and basic courtesy. In what some observers called “the perennial campaign,” legislators spend much of their time raising money, courting special‐interest groups, and delivering speeches and sound‐bite comments to nearly empty House and Senate chambers for the benefit of TV cameras and voters back home.
See also Constitution; New Deal Era, The; Taxation; Veto Power.

Bibliography

George B. Galloway , History of the House of Representatives, 1961.
Alvin M. Josephy Jr. , On the Hill: A History of the American Congress, 1979.
U.S. Congress, Senate , Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989, 1988.
Robert C. Byrd , The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, 4 vols., 1989–1994.
Joel H. Silbey, ed., Encyclopedia of the American Legislative System, 3 vols., 1994.
Donald C. Bacon, Roger H. Davidson, and Morton Keller, eds., The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, 4 vols., 1995.

Wendy Wolff

Senate The Senate forms the upper house of the bicameral Congress established by the U.S. Constitution. The earlier government under the Articles of Confederation had consisted of a Congress of one house, in which each state had a single vote. With no executive branch, all officials were responsible to Congress. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was called because that government, a confederation of sovereign states rather than a union, did not meet the needs of the new nation.

After extensive discussions, the framers arrived at the so‐called Great Compromise. They devised a House of Representatives in which a state's representation was proportional to its population and a Senate in which each state would be equally represented with two members, thus providing protection to the smaller states. The two senators representing each state would serve staggered, six‐year terms, with only one‐third of the Senate running in any election year. The Senate is thus a continuing body, unlike the House of Representatives whose entire membership is elected every two years. The Convention's members hoped the Senate would carefully review measures passed by the House, which, with frequent elections, would more likely be swayed by popular passions. With this goal in mind, they set the Senate's age requirement at thirty (in contrast to the House's twenty‐five), and they provided for the election of senators by state legislatures rather than by popular vote.

To start the staggered terms, senators of the first Congress drew lots to determine who would have two‐, four‐, or six‐year terms. The Senate continues to be divided into three “classes,” depending on which year a member faces reelection. When a new state enters the Union, its senators are assigned to classes so that the number in each class remains nearly equal, with no class having more than one senator from any state.

Powers

. The Senate shares with the House responsibility for making laws, declaring war, and appropriating funds to operate the federal government, as well as for instituting new programs and overseeing old ones. With the House, the Senate has the power to override presidential vetoes by a two‐thirds vote. In addition, the Constitution assigned three powers exclusively to the Senate: reviewing and approving treaties, confirming nominations of judges and executive branch officials, and serving as the court for impeachment trials.

Under the Articles of Confederation, congressional agents negotiated treaties, which required approval by nine of the thirteen states. The U.S. Constitution, by contrast, gives the treatymaking power to the executive, with the requirement of Senate approval. Having the Senate review treaties, the framers thought, would provide counsel to the president, as well as place checks and balances on the executive power. Since all states have equal representation in the Senate, the arrangement would also protect the interests of the states.

In practice, the president submits the text of each treaty to the Senate, which reviews it first in committee. If the committee approves, it sends the treaty to the full Senate for a vote. Presidents have frequently found it useful to consult the Senate while negotiating a treaty or to include senators in the delegation conducting the negotiations. On only twenty‐one occasions has the Senate formally rejected a treaty, the most famous being the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I. After President Woodrow Wilson failed either to consult the Senate or to accept reservations it had adopted, the body refused to approve the treaty in two votes in 1919 and 1920.

The requirement for Senate approval of presidential nominations to executive and judicial offices is another of the checks and balances written into the Constitution. Every year the Senate reviews thousands of military and civilian nominations, generally submitted to it in long lists, as well as the individual nominations of cabinet officers, federal judges, and ambassadors. Most of these nominees are confirmed, but occasionally the Senate objects. As of 1997, the Senate had failed to confirm a total of twenty‐seven Supreme Court nominees. While it has formally rejected only nine cabinet appointees, the nominations of eight others have been withdrawn in the face of Senate opposition.

Fearing that the president might abuse his position, the Constitutional Convention included an impeachment provision similar to those many of the new states had included in their constitutions. After considering whether the Supreme Court should try impeachment cases, the framers foresaw a possible conflict of interest, since the Court's members were presidential appointees. They settled instead on having the Senate try impeachments. Through 1999, the Senate had conducted impeachment trials of two presidents ( Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, both acquitted); one senator ( William Blount, 1797, already expelled, so impeachment failed); one cabinet officer ( William Belknap, 1876, already resigned); one Supreme Court justice ( Samuel Chase, 1804, acquitted); and twelve federal judges (seven found guilty and removed from office).

Structure

. Under the Constitution, the vice president of the United States is the president and presiding officer of the Senate. The Constitution also gives the Senate the power to choose a president pro tempore to preside in his absence, as well as authority over its own membership, including the power to expel a member by a two‐thirds vote and to serve as judge in contested election cases. Empowered to select its officers, the Senate elects a chaplain, a secretary, and a sergeant at arms. For more than two hundred years, these latter two officers have supervised the Senate's basic administrative structure. The secretary of the Senate, the body's chief administrative and financial officer, also oversees the official journals and records and the clerks who serve in the Senate chamber. The sergeant at arms is the chief law enforcement and protocol officer of the Senate and also manages most of the support services.

Many of the Senate's rules were originally based on English precedent, as well as on the rules of the Continental and Confederation congresses. The Senate has recodified its rules on seven occasions, most recently in 1979. Unlike the House, which strictly regulates the length of debate, the Senate prides itself on its right of extended debate, as a protection for the rights of the minority. Through the delaying tactic known as the filibuster, a minority of senators can block action on a measure. Not until 1917 did the Senate adopt its first “cloture” rule permitting a vote by two‐thirds of the senators to shut off debate and bring a measure to a vote. Subsequent refinements to the rule now allow a vote by sixty senators (three‐fifths of the Senate) to close debate.

Since the first Congress, the Senate has assigned proposed legislation (bills) to committees for review. Initially, temporary committees handled specific legislation and then disbanded. Not until 1816, except for three housekeeping panels, did the Senate create permanent standing legislative committees. The number of standing committees grew steadily thereafter, reaching more than seventy by 1913. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 reduced the number of committees to seventeen, while providing for professional staff members. A further restructuring in 1977 produced the approximately sixteen standing committees that existed in 1997.

In designing the Senate, the framers did not envision political parties, but party divisions began almost immediately, and continued through the early nineteenth century. By 1860 the present Democratic and Republican parties were in place. Although Senate Democrats and Republicans elected chairs and secretaries in the late 1800s, not until the early twentieth century did the body adopt the modern system of party leadership. In the 1920s the party caucuses began electing floor leaders. These majority and minority leaders, assisted by party whips, manage legislation on the Senate floor.

Unlike the House of Representatives, which was open to the public from the beginning, the Senate initially met behind closed doors, not opening public galleries until 1795. Thus, in the early 1790s, newspapers reported the House debates but citizens knew little of what transpired in the Senate. Starting in 1802, the Senate admitted notetakers to record its debates, which were published initially by the newspaper the National Intelligencer, and later in other private publications such as the Register of Debates and the Congressional Globe. The official Congressional Record, a government publication, began reporting in 1873, at which time the Senate also hired its own official reporters.

The Senate considers treaties and nominations in executive session. Until 1929, these executive sessions were generally closed to the public, although detailed information about the debates regularly leaked to the press. Recognizing that the sources of the leaks must be the members themselves, the Senate in 1929 opened all executive sessions except those involving national security.

Development and Growth

. The Senate's relative importance within the federal government has fluctuated over its history. In the early years, because the House met in open session, its debates had more public visibility than the Senate's. By the 1830s, the Senate had entered what became known as its Golden Age, as intense debates raged over slavery and the very nature of the Union among such leaders as Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited Washington in 1832, he deplored the rowdiness of the House of Representatives, while praising the Senate for its articulate statesmen (apparently unaware that many senators had previously served in the House).

Memorable Senate debates and bargaining produced the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, both dealing with slavery and the admission of new states to the Union, but only temporarily defusing deepening sectional conflicts. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the Senate shrank temporarily from sixty‐eight members to fewer than fifty, as senators from the seceding states withdrew or were expelled.

The dominance of Radical Republicans in Congress during the Civil War and after set up a confrontation with President Andrew Johnson that culminated in the impeachment of Johnson, whom the Senate failed to convict by a single vote in 1868. For the rest of the nineteenth century, the Senate, still led principally by Republicans, dominated the federal government until its position was challenged in the early 1900s by the powerful presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

The turn of the twentieth century also saw growing public dissatisfaction with the method of electing U.S. senators. Political battles in state legislatures could lead to long vacancies in some Senate seats. This problem, combined with charges of corruption and purchased votes, led to adoption and ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, directing that senators be elected by popular vote.

Influential during the 1920s, the Senate played a more subordinate role during the early New Deal Era as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, enjoying overwhelming popularity and strong congressional majorities, proposed measure after measure that received prompt legislative approval. The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 streamlined the operations of both the Senate and House to deal with the flood of postwar legislation. Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist crusade of the early 1950s brought moments of high drama. The so‐called Army‐McCarthy hearings of early 1954 attracted a vast television audience. That December, resorting to a rarely used expedient just short of expulsion, the Senate voted to censure the Wisconsin Republican.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Senate struggled with civil rights legislation before breaking a southern filibuster to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. As the Vietnam War absorbed the nation's treasure and manpower during the later 1960s and early 1970s, the Senate and House eventually balked and cut off funding for the war. They also adopted the War Powers Resolution of 1973, requiring the president to notify Congress and seek congressional approval when sending U.S. troops into combat. Again asserting its authority in early 1991, the Senate held an intense debate before approving the use of military force to repel Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Since the 1920s, the Senate has energetically exerted its right to investigate executive branch activities, supported by a Supreme Court decision (McGrain v. Daugherty, 1927) that established the power of Senate committees to compel testimony from witnesses. The Senate's high‐profile investigations have included the Teapot Dome inquiry of 1923–1924, probing the leasing of government oil reserves in Wyoming; the “Truman Committee's” investigation of defense contracts during and after World War II; Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver's investigation of organized crime in the early 1950s; and the Watergate Committee's inquiry into wrongdoing by the Richard M. Nixon administration.

For more than two centuries, the Senate has fulfilled its unique constitutional role as the deliberative arm of the legislative branch, using its power to review treaties and nominations and its right of extended debate to slow executive branch or House pressures for more precipitous action.
See also Continental Congress; Persian Gulf War; Teapot Dome Scandal.

Bibliography

Richard A. Baker , The Senate of the United States: A Bicentennial History, 1988.
U.S. Congress, Senate , Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989, 1988.
Robert C. Byrd , The Senate, 1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, 4 vols., 1989–1994.
Bob Dole , Historical Almanac of the United States Senate, 1989.
U.S. Congress, Senate , Guide to the Records of the United States Senate at the National Archives, 1789–1989: Bicentennial Edition, prepared by the National Archives' Center for Legislative Archives, 1989.
Joel H. Silbey , Encyclopedia of the American Legislative System, 3 vols., 1994.
Donald Bacon, Roger Davidson, and Morton Keller, eds., The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress, 4 vols., 1995.
U.S. Congress, Senate , Guide to Research Collections of Former United States Senators, 1789–1995, 1995.
U.S. Congress, Senate , Senators of the United States: A Historical Bibliography, 1995.

Wendy Wolff

House of Representatives Of all the components of the federal government, the House of Representatives derives most directly from Great Britain, being closely patterned on the House of Commons and retaining many of that body's features, including a Speaker as presiding officer.

Creating the House of Representatives

. The decision to create a House of Representatives elected directly by the people was made by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 following earlier decisions establishing a three‐part national government and a bicameral national legislature. The convention assigned eighteen specific powers to the legislative branch, including the power to levy and collect taxes, declare war, and regulate interstate and foreign commerce. The most divisive issue, and the one on which the convention might have foundered, was the manner in which seats in the House would be assigned to the thirteen states. Would the states be equally represented, or would they be given seats according to their populations? After lengthy debate, the convention decided that states should receive seats in proportion to their population of free citizens plus three‐fifths of all others. (The latter provision, a concession to the southern states, with their vast populations of slaves, would continue until nullified after the Civil War by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.) The delegates next settled on a two‐year term for members of the House; decided that revenue bills should originate in the House but be subject to modification by the other branch of the national legislature, the Senate; and set the qualifications for membership in the House: to be elected, a person must have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, must be a resident of the state, and must be at least twenty‐five years of age.

The Nineteenth Century

. The first House, which convened on 1 April 1789, elected Frederick A.C. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as Speaker. As presiding officer of the House, the Speaker is the only official of the chamber specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The need for strong leadership was paramount in a chamber destined to grow larger as the nation's population expanded. Beginning with only 65 members, the size of the house nearly tripled by 1830 to 186 members, and it increased to 435 by 1910, at which point the number was fixed by statute. Speakers have played a central role throughout the House's history, although the influence of individual Speakers has varied widely.

In the early years of the republic, the House of Representatives, possessing the democratic legitimacy that came from its members' direct election by the people, was the dominant legislative chamber. (Senators were not directly elected until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.) But equally important was the emergence of a forceful Speaker in Henry Clay of Kentucky, who was elected Speaker on his first day in the House, 19 January 1811, and served almost continuously until 1825.

Because of the rough balance between slave and free states in the Senate, that chamber beginning around 1820 became the principal forum for debating the divisive issues of slavery and tariffs; the House proved less able to conciliate these differences. After the Civil War, however, the House again became dominant because one party or the other usually had a clear majority, and a number of unusually strong Speakers emerged, including Republicans James G. Blaine and Thomas Brackett Reed of Maine, and Democrats John Carlisle of Kentucky and Charles F. Crisp of Georgia.

With the growth of the House came two important adaptations: legislative committees and an elaborate structure of rules that govern debate and the lawmaking process. Initially, House committees were “select” or “special committees,” set up either for a brief period—such as a single two‐year Congress—or to deal with a single bill. In the earliest period there were only two standing (that is, permanent) committees: a Committee of Elections and, to fulfill the House's constitutional role as the point of origin for revenue bills, the Committee on Ways and Means. The latter body established in 1795, is the only early committee that survives under its original name.

Originally, the House was governed by a simple set of rules, one of which allowed the members to resolve themselves into “The Committee of the Whole House” to expedite action. By the legal fiction of reconvening under a different name, quorum requirements could be relaxed. At first, debate was unlimited. Filibusters, or interminable speech‐making to purposely block consideration of a bill, were common. Only in 1811, as war with Britain loomed, did the House adopt a motion that allowed members to cut off debate by calling for the previous question, a parliamentary procedure requiring an immediate vote on whatever motion is on the floor. Denounced as a “gag rule,” this initial effort to limit debate proved ineffective, and not until 1841 was a rule adopted limiting each member to one hour of debate on each question. Filibustering was further restricted in 1847 with the adoption of a rule that gave members only five minutes to introduce, explain, and advocate amendments to bills. Resourceful representatives, however, continued a form of filibustering by offering many amendments—a tactic that was restricted in 1860.

One of the most radical steps ever taken by a Speaker came in response to members' practice of deliberately failing to respond to a roll call, so as to make it impossible to achieve a quorum. In January 1890, when minority Democrats refused to answer the roll call that would register them as present and prepared to vote, Speaker Reed ordered the clerk of the House to record as present all members who were actually in the chamber. By thwarting the “disappearing quorum” and other techniques used by the minority to obstruct the legislative process, Reed earned the enmity of Democrats, who denounced him as “Czar Reed,” but he enabled the majority to work its will more easily and thereby moved the House closer to the majoritarian institution it would become.

Reforms and Changes in the Twentieth Century

. Reed's six years as Speaker (1889–1891 and 1895–1899) marked the beginning of a period of extreme dominance by House Speakers. Joseph G. Cannon, an Illinois Republican who served as Speaker from 1903 until 1911, ruled the House with an iron hand and greatly reduced the influence of individual members. Cannon inherited Reed's powers to appoint the standing committees and name their chairs. He also appointed all five members of the Rules Committee, the most important procedural committee in the House, which was responsible for forwarding bills to the entire chamber for action. As presiding officer of the House, Cannon would refuse to recognize those who had incurred his disfavor. His dictatorial reign ended in 1910 when a group of Progressive Republicans joined with the Democrats to strip the Speaker of his membership on the Rules Committee (a position of vast influence that Speakers had enjoyed since 1858), denied him the power to appoint standing committees and their chairs, and restricted his discretion in recognizing or refusing to recognize members. While the revolt against Cannon divested the speakership of certain autocratic features, the Speaker retained an important core of powers that included the ability to influence—if not control—committee assignments and to interpret House rules.

One outgrowth of the limitations placed on Cannon was the principle that seniority would determine who would chair House committees. Ultimately, the seniority system meant that committee leadership was usually vested in those members—often conservative southern Democrats—from the safest districts. Reformers, strengthened by a large influx of younger Democrats in the election of 1974, succeeded in reducing the force of the seniority system in the 1970s when they required chairpersons of standing committees and of the powerful appropriations subcommittees to be approved by a vote of all the party's members (the Caucus). In 1975 the Caucus ousted three senior Democratic chairmen. Despite the reforms, however, there remained a presumption that seniority on a committee gave one a strong claim to the chairmanship. But even this presumption was eroded in the 104th Congress (1995–1997) when Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia elevated some relatively junior members to committee chairmanships, most notably Bob Livingston of Louisiana as chair of Appropriations and John Kasich of Ohio as chair of Budget. As another by‐product of dramatic Republican gains in the 1994 midterm elections, the Republican Conference (the counterpart of the Democratic Caucus) restricted chairs of standing committees to three two‐year terms, altered the jurisdiction of committees, and changed the names of most of them.

While changes in many House rules reflected action by the party in power, other reforms resulted from nonpartisan statutory action. These include the legislative reorganization acts of 1946 and 1970, which reorganized committees and improved their staffing, and the 1974 Budget Control and Impound‐ment Act, which established budget committees for both chambers.

Throughout its history, certain persistent tensions have existed within the House: between the need for strong leadership to process legislation efficiently and the desire of individual members to have a role in shaping bills, and between the desire by party leaders to fashion comprehensive policies and the needs of the individual members to retain the support of their constituents or of special‐interest groups.

Another source of tension that arose in the late twentieth century was that between the power of incumbency, which reinforced the overwhelming preponderance of white male representatives, and pressures to make the House more truly representative of the population as a whole. Because of the manner in which House districts are drawn by state legislatures, one party or the other often has disproportionate strength, making reelection all but certain for most members. Indeed, it is unusual for more than 25 percent of all House seats to be seriously contested. The resources available to incumbents further enhance their reelection chances. These factors contributed to the dominance of the Democrats between 1955 and 1995.

Efforts to promote racial diversity by redrawing district lines proved contentious. A succession of Supreme Court cases, beginning in 1964 with Wesberry v. Sanders, coupled with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its subsequent amendments required state legislatures to maximize the chances that candidates who belonged to racial minority groups could win seats in the House. A generation later, however, Supreme Court decisions in the cases of Shaw v. Reno (1993) and Miller v. Johnson (1995) narrowed the role that race could play in redistricting. In 1996, thirty‐eight African Americans served as voting members of the House, all but one a Democrat. While African Americans, comprising 12 percent of the population, were slightly underrepresented in the House in the later 1990s, with about 7 percent of the membership, women, who make up more than 50 percent of the population, constituted only about 13 percent of the House. Latinos, with 9 percent of the population nationally, claimed only 4 percent of House seats in 1997. As a new century dawned, the House of Representatives continued to evolve, responding to the changing realities of American life while also reflecting the traditions and precedents deeply embedded in its more than two‐hundred‐year history.
See also Federal Government.

Bibliography

George Rothwell Brown , The Leadership of Congress, 1922.
George B. Galloway , History of the House of Representatives, 1961.
Neil MacNeil , Forge of Democracy, 1963.
Alvin M. Josephy Jr. , On the Hill, 1979.
Roger H. Davidson , The Postreform Congress, 1992.
Barbara Sinclair , Majority Leadership in the U.S. House, 1983.
Ronald M. Peters Jr. , The History and Character of the Speakership, in Ronald M. Peters Jr., ed., The Speaker, 1995.

Ross K. Baker

; Updated by

Paul S. Boyer