This clause empowers the House and the Senate to judge its own members as to whether the elections are constitutional, whether the returns and qualifications are according to the “chains of the Constitution”. 

According to Cleon Skousen, “A state which allows a Senator or Representative to be elected by illegal procedures cannot afterwards claim that the rejection of their Senators or Representatives has deprived that state of equal representation.”(1)

It requires a majority of each house to do its business. This is clarified by James Iredell, “Do gentlemen mean that it ought to have been provided by the Constitution, that the whole body should attend before a particular business was done? Then it would be in the power of a few men, by neglecting to attend, to obstruct the public business, and possible bring on the destruction of their country.”(2)

Madison said of this clause, in Federalist 58, “It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.”

George Mason added, “In this extended country, embracing so great a diversity of interests, it would be dangerous to the distant parts to allow a small number of members of the two houses to make laws.”(3)

The power to use penalties to compel members to attend is explained by Gouverneur Morris, “The secession of a small number ought not to be suffered to break a quorum. Such events in the states may have been of little consequence. In the national councils they may be fatal. Besides other mischief, if a few can break up a quorum, they may seize a moment when a particular part of the continent may be in need of immediate aid, to extort, by threatening a succession, some unjust and selfish measure.”(4)

Father, help us to govern ourselves in the fear and admonition of Your Word!

(1) Cleon Skousen, Making of America, NCCS (USA, April 2009 printing), page 330

(2) Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, (Philadelphia: JB Lippincott Company, 1901), 4:130

(3) James Madison, The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Which Framed the Constitution of the United States of America, ed. Gaillard Hunt and James Brown Scott (New York: Oxford University Press 1920), 376

(4) James Madison, The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Which Framed the Constitution of the United States of America, ed. Gaillard Hunt and James Brown Scott (New York: Oxford University Press 1920), 377

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I have learned many of these quotes from The Making of America by Cleon Skousen.        You may purchase it here.

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