Throughout this stage of the process, the committees and subcommittees call hearings to investigate the merits and flaws of the bill. They invite experts, advocates, and opponents to appear before the committee and provide testimony, and can compel people to appear using subpoena power if necessary.
If the full committee votes to approve the bill, it is reported to the floor of the House or Senate, and the majority party leadership decides when to place the bill on the calendar for consideration. If a bill is particularly pressing, it may be considered right away.
Others may wait for months or never be scheduled at all. When the bill comes up for consideration, the House has a very structured debate process. Each member who wishes to speak only has a few minutes, and the number and kind of amendments are usually limited.
In the Senate, debate on most bills is unlimited — Senators may speak to issues other than the bill under consideration during their speeches, and any amendment can be introduced.
Senators can use this to filibuster bills under consideration, a procedure by which a Senator delays a vote on a bill — and by extension its passage — by refusing to stand down. A supermajority of 60 Senators can break a filibuster by invoking cloture, or the cession of debate on the bill, and forcing a vote. Once debate is over, the votes of a simple majority passes the bill.
A bill must pass both houses of Congress before it goes to the President for consideration. Though the Constitution requires that the two bills have the exact same wording, this rarely happens in practice. To bring the bills into alignment, a Conference Committee is convened, consisting of members from both chambers. The members of the committee produce a conference report, intended as the final version of the bill.
Each chamber then votes again to approve the conference report. Depending on where the bill originated, the final text is then enrolled by either the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the Senate, and presented to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate for their signatures.
The bill is then sent to the President. When receiving a bill from Congress, the President has several options. If the President agrees substantially with the bill, he or she may sign it into law, and the bill is then printed in the Statutes at Large.
If the President believes the law to be bad policy, he may veto it and send it back to Congress. Congress may override the veto with a two-thirds vote of each chamber, at which point the bill becomes law and is printed. There are two other options that the President may exercise. If Congress is in session and the President takes no action within 10 days, the bill becomes law.
If Congress adjourns before 10 days are up and the President takes no action, then the bill dies and Congress may not vote to override.
This is called a pocket veto, and if Congress still wants to pass the legislation, they must begin the entire process anew. Congress, as one of the three coequal branches of government, is ascribed significant powers by the Constitution.
The Court has blown hot and cold on the issue of a quorum as a prerequisite to a valid contempt citation, and no firm statement of a rule is possible, although it seems probable that no quorum is ordinarily necessary. Protection of Witnesses; Constitutional Guarantees. This section addresses the limitations the Bill of Rights places on the scope and nature of the congressional power to inquire.
The most extensive amount of litigation in this area has involved the privilege against self-incrimination guaranteed against governmental abridgment by the Fifth Amendment. Observance of the privilege by congressional committees has been so uniform that no court has ever held that it must be observed, though dicta are plentiful. There is no prescribed form in which one must plead the privilege. Another witness, who was threatened with prosecution for his Communist activities, could claim the privilege even to some questions the answers to which he might have been able to explain away as unrelated to criminal conduct; if an answer might tend to be incriminatory, the witness is not deprived of the privilege merely because he might have been able to refute inferences of guilt.
The privilege against self-incrimination is not available as a defense to an organizational officer who refuses to turn over organization documents and records to an investigating committee.
In Hutcheson v. United States , the Court rejected a challenge to a Senate committee inquiry into union corruption on the part of a witness who was under indictment in state court on charges relating to the same matters about which the committee sought to interrogate him. The witness did not plead his privilege against self-incrimination but contended that, by questioning him about matters that would aid the state prosecutor, the committee had denied him due process.
Claims relating to the First Amendment have been frequently asserted and as frequently denied. It is not that the First Amendment is inapplicable to congressional investigations, it is that, under the prevailing Court interpretation, the First Amendment does not bar all legislative restrictions of the rights guaranteed by it.
Where First Amendment rights are asserted to bar governmental interrogation, resolution of the issue always involves a balancing by the courts of the competing private and public interests at stake in the particular circumstances shown.
Thus, the Court has declined to rule that under the circumstances of the cases investigating committees are precluded from making inquiries simply because the subject area was education or because the witnesses at the time they were called were engaged in protected activities such as petitioning Congress to abolish the inquiring committee.
Other constitutional rights of witnesses have been asserted at various times, but without success or even substantial minority support. Explicit judicial recognition of the right of either house of Congress to commit for contempt a witness who ignores its summons or refuses to answer its inquiries dates from McGrain v.
Dunn , which stated in broad terms the right of either branch of the legislature to attach and punish a person other than a member for contempt of its authority. Gordon , although the Court there held that the implied power to deal with contempt did not extend to the arrest of a person who published matter defamatory of the House. The cases emphasize that the power to punish for contempt rests upon the right of self-preservation.
Mac-Cracken , the Court turned aside an argument that the Senate had no power to punish a witness who, having been commanded to produce papers, destroyed them after service of the subpoena. Under the rule laid down by Anderson v. Dunn , imprisonment by one of the Houses of Congress could not extend beyond the adjournment of the body which ordered it.
Because of this limitation and because contempt trials before the bar of the House charging were time-consuming, in Congress enacted a statute providing for criminal process in the federal courts with prescribed penalties for contempt of Congress. The Supreme Court has held that the purpose of this statute is merely supplementary of the power retained by Congress, and all constitutional objections to it were overruled.
Because Congress has invoked the aid of the federal judicial system in protecting itself against contumacious conduct, the consequence, the Court has asserted numerous times, is that the duty has been conferred upon the federal courts to accord a person prosecuted for his statutory offense every safeguard that the law accords in all other federal criminal cases, and the discussion in previous sections of many reversals of contempt convictions bears witness to the assertion in practice.
What constitutional protections ordinarily necessitated by due process requirements, such as notice, right to counsel, confrontation, and the like, prevail in a contempt trial before the bar of one House or the other is an open question.
It has long been settled that the courts may not intervene directly to restrain the carrying out of an investigation or the manner of an investigation, and that a witness who believes the inquiry to be illegal or otherwise invalid in order to raise the issue must place himself in contempt and raise his beliefs as affirmative defenses on his criminal prosecution.
This understanding was sharply reinforced when the Court held that the speech-or-debate clause utterly foreclosed judicial interference with the conduct of a congressional investigation, through review of the propriety of subpoenas or otherwise. Dimock, Congressional Investigating Committees ch. Daugherty, U. United States, U. See also Eastland v. Thompson, U. The internal quotations are from Kilbourn v. Such an inquiry was made. Globe, 36th Congress, 1st sess. But see Hutcheson v. Brimson, U.
Douds, U. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, U. United States, F. It would be hard to conceive of there being too much talk about the practical concerns. For contrasting views of the reach of this statement, compare United States v. Rumely, U. Attorney General of New Hampshire, U. In times of political passion, dishonest or vindicative motives are readily attributable to legislative conduct and as readily believed.
Courts are not the place for such controversies. Brandhove, U. For a statement of the traditional unwillingness to inquire into congressional motives in the judging of legislation, see United States v. But note that in Jenkins v. In two pending cases, however, sweeping challenges to the inquisitorial authority of the legislative branch are offered, which, if sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States, will definitely restrict for the future the practically unlimited powers of investigation heretofore exercised by the legislative branch.
At the basis of any effective power of investigation there must be authority to punish unwilling or untruthful witnesses for contempt. Such authority is not specifically conferred upon Congress by the Constitution. The Supreme Court has held, however, that the power to punish contumacious witnesses is necessarily implied in those provisions of the Constitution which entrust specific judicial functions to the two houses, and may therefore be employed in proceedings in discharge of those functions.
Help Login. Search by keyword. Congress U. Presidency U. Judicial Powers of Legislative Branch At the basis of any effective power of investigation there must be authority to punish unwilling or untruthful witnesses for contempt. All Rights Reserved. The Senate's Power of Investigation. Report Outline Daugherty and Sinclair Contempt Cases British, Colonial and State Precedents Investigations by the House and Senate Executive Resistance to Legislative Inquiries Although not expressly granted by the Constitution, broad powers of investigation have been exercised by Congress, dating almost from the establishment of the federal government.
Constitution and Separation of Powers.
0コメント