The topic of
discussion on this Constitution Monday comes from the Twentieth Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States of America: “… the terms of Senators and Representatives
[shall end] at noon on the 3d day of January … and the terms of their
successors shall then begin.” This
provision of the Constitution gives newly elected Senators and Representatives
the right to assume the duties of their offices on the third day of January
following their election in November.
W. Cleon Skousen explained, “After
the Constitution was ratified by the required number of states, the new
government officially began operation on March 4, 1789. Therefore, the terms of Senators and Congressmen
always began and ended on March 4 in odd-numbered years. Because Article I, section 4, clause 2 of the
Constitution required sessions of Congress to begin on the first Monday in
December each year, those who were defeated in the November elections (always
in even-numbered years) were required to attend the next session until their
terms expired the following March 4.
Referred to as `lame ducks,’ they continued to represent people who had
refused to elect them.
“Those who had won the November elections were not
entitled to take office until their predecessors’ terms had expired. Therefore, since the next Congress would not
assemble in regular session until the December following March 4, they were not
able to take office for more than thirteen months after the election was held!
“The Twentieth Amendment solved
this serious problem by enabling newly elected Senators and Congressmen to take
office on January 3, some two months after their election instead of the former
thirteen months.” (See The Making America – The Substance and
Meaning of the Constitution, p. 750.)
John Copeland Nagle of The
Heritage Foundation added further reasoning:
“The six clauses of the Twentieth Amendment are readily divided into
three pairs. The first two sections
shorten the `lame-duck’ period after an election and before the new officials
take office….
“The first two sections respond
to the initial purpose for the amendment, which was the concern about lame-duck
sessions of Congress. The framers of the
Twentieth Amendment, however, wanted to eliminate such lame-duck sessions of Congress
altogether, not just shorten them.
Legislation enacted by lame-duck Congresses had been roundly criticized
as undemocratic because the people had already selected the successors of the
representatives who were enacting bills in lame-duck sessions. The text of the amendment failed to prohibit
future lame-duck sessions, though, and that purpose was forgotten soon after
the states ratified the amendment in 1933.”
Nagle continued his article by
stating that “Congress met in lame-duck sessions thirteen times since the
Twentieth Amendment became law.” Some of
the actions taken by lame-duck sessions include: (1) Senate confirmation of Stephen G. Breyer as
a federal appeals judge in 1980; (2) House impeachment of Bill Clinton after
the 1998 election.
Nagle continued, “There is
another question that the framers of the Twentieth Amendment anticipated but
which the language of the amendment fails to resolve. According to the Twelfth Amendment, the House
of Representatives chooses the President if no candidate receives a majority of
the electoral votes. Thomas Jefferson,
John Quincy Adams, and Rutherford B. Hayes were all elected by the House – more
specifically, the lame-duck House, not the newly elected House. The supporters of the Twentieth Amendment
wanted to ensure that any future selections of the President would be made by
the new Members of the House. The text
of the amendment does not express that purpose, and the question of which House
could act was one of many unanswered constitutional questions discussed while
the presidential election of 2000 was still in dispute. (See The
Heritage Guide to the Constitution, pp. 419-420.)
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