Congress, Qualifications of Members Of

Congress, Qualifications of Members Of The Constitution sets forth only three qualifications for membership in Congress: U.S. citizenship, residency in the state represented, and a minimum age. The framers set the citizenship requirement at seven years for members of the House of Representatives and nine years for senators. Representatives must be at least twenty‐five years old to take their oath of office, while senators must be thirty. (Contrary to earlier interpretations, both bodies now recognize that a person may stand for election prior to reaching the required age or term of citizenship.) On several occasions early in the nineteenth century, members‐elect were admitted before attaining the specified minimum age. When Kentucky's Henry Clay took his Senate oath in 1806 at the age of twenty‐nine years and eight months, he allegedly told those who asked about the constitutionality of this action to “propound that question to my constituents.”

During the Civil War, Congress added an additional membership qualification. All members‐elect were required to take an oath that they had never been disloyal to the government of the United States. Several persons were excluded in the years following the war for refusing to ascribe to that oath (see Test Oaths). After World War I, the House twice denied a seat to Socialist Victor Berger on grounds of disloyalty but later admitted him when the Supreme Court reversed his espionage conviction (see Subversion). Finally in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. McCormack that the Constitution's requirements for membership were exclusive. In the Powell case, the Court decided that although the Constitution gives Congress the right to judge the qualifications of its members, it must exercise that right within the Constitution's express provisions.

Richard A. Baker