Opinion ID: 107969
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Pre-Convention Precedents.

Text: Since our rejection of respondents' interpretation of  5 results in significant measure from a disagreement with their historical analysis, we must consider the relevant historical antecedents in considerable detail. As do respondents, we begin with the English and colonial precedents. The earliest English exclusion precedent appears to be a declaration by the House of Commons in 1553 that Alex. Nowell, being Prebendary [ i. e., a clergyman] in Westminster, and thereby having voice in the Convocation House, cannot be a member of this House . . . . J. Tanner, Tudor Constitutional Documents: A. D. 1485-1603, p. 596 (2d ed. 1930). This decision, however, was consistent with a long-established tradition that clergy who participated in their own representative assemblies or convocations were ineligible for membership in the House of Commons. [45] See 1 E. Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons 125 (1963); T. Taswell-Langmead's English Constitutional History 142-143 (11th ed. T. Plucknett 1960). The traditional ineligibility of clergymen was recognized as a standing incapacity. [46] See 1 W. Blackstone's Commentaries . Nowell's exclusion, therefore, is irrelevant to the present case, for petitioners concedeÔÇöand we agreeÔÇöthat if Powell had not met one of the standing qualifications set forth in the Constitution, he could have been excluded under Art. I,  5. The earliest colonial exclusions also fail to support respondents' theory. [47] Respondents' remaining 16th and 17th century English precedents all are cases of expulsion, although some were for misdeeds not encompassed within recognized standing incapacities existing either at the time of the expulsions or at the time the Constitution was drafted in 1787. [48] Although these early expulsion orders occasionally contained statements suggesting that the individual expelled was thereafter ineligible for re-election, at least for the duration of the Parliament from which he was expelled, [49] there is no indication that any were re-elected and thereafter excluded. Respondents' colonial precedents during this period follow a similar pattern. [50] Apparently the re-election of an expelled member first occurred in 1712. The House of Commons had expelled Robert Walpole for receiving kickbacks for contracts relating to foraging the Troops, 17 H. C. Jour. 28, and committed him to the Tower. Nevertheless, two months later he was re-elected. The House thereupon resolved [t]hat Robert Walpole, Esquire, having been, this Session of Parliament, committed a Prisoner to the Tower of London, and expelled [from] this House, . . . is, incapable of being elected a Member to serve in this present Parliament . . . . Id., at 128. (Second emphasis added.) A new election was ordered, and Walpole was not re-elected. At least two similar exclusions after an initial expulsion were effected in the American colonies during the first half of the 18th century. [51] Respondents urge that the Walpole case provides strong support for their conclusion that the pre-Convention English and colonial practice was that members-elect could be excluded for their prior misdeeds at the sole discretion of the legislative body to which they had been elected. However, this conclusion overlooks an important limiting characteristic of the Walpole case and of both the colonial exclusion cases on which respondents rely: the excluded member had been previously expelled. Moreover, Walpole was excluded only for the remainder of the Parliament from which he had been expelled. The theory seems to have been that expulsion lasted as long as the parliament . . . . Taswell-Langmead, supra, at 584, n. 99. Accord, 1 W. Blackstone's Commentaries . Thus, Walpole's exclusion justifies only the proposition that an expulsion lasted for the remainder of the particular Parliament, and the expelled member was therefore subject to subsequent exclusion if reelected prior to the next general election. The two colonial cases arguably support a somewhat broader principle, i. e., that the assembly could permanently expel. Apparently the colonies did not consistently adhere to the theory that an expulsion lasted only until the election of a new assembly. M. Clarke, Parliamentary Privilege in the American Colonies 196-202 (1943). [52] Clearly, however, none of these cases supports respondents' contention that by the 18th century the English Parliament and colonial assemblies had assumed absolute discretion to exclude any member-elect they deemed unfit to serve. Rather, they seem to demonstrate that a member could be excluded only if he had first been expelled. Even if these cases could be construed to support respondents' contention, their precedential value was nullified prior to the Constitutional Convention. By 1782, after a long struggle, the arbitrary exercise of the power to exclude was unequivocally repudiated by a House of Commons resolution which ended the most notorious English election dispute of the 18th centuryÔÇö the John Wilkes case. While serving as a member of Parliament in 1763, Wilkes published an attack on a recent peace treaty with France, calling it a product of bribery and condemning the Crown's ministers as  `the tools of despotism and corruption.'  R. Postgate, That Devil Wilkes 53 (1929). Wilkes and others who were involved with the publication in which the attack appeared were arrested. [53] Prior to Wilkes' trial, the House of Commons expelled him for publishing a false, scandalous, and seditious libel. 15 Parl. Hist. Eng. 1393 (1764). Wilkes then fled to France and was subsequently sentenced to exile. 9 L. Gipson, The British Empire Before the American Revolution 37 (1956). Wilkes returned to England in 1768, the same year in which the Parliament from which he had been expelled was dissolved. He was elected to the next Parliament, and he then surrendered himself to the Court of King's Bench. Wilkes was convicted of seditious libel and sentenced to 22 months' imprisonment. The new Parliament declared him ineligible for membership and ordered that he be expelled this House. 16 Parl. Hist. Eng. 545 (1769). Although Wilkes was re-elected to fill the vacant seat three times, each time the same Parliament declared him ineligible and refused to seat him. See 11 Gipson, supra, at 207-215. [54] Wilkes was released from prison in 1770 and was again elected to Parliament in 1774. For the next several years, he unsuccessfully campaigned to have the resolutions expelling him and declaring him incapable of re-election expunged from the record. Finally, in 1782, the House of Commons voted to expunge them, resolving that the prior House actions were subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of this kingdom. 22 Parl. Hist. Eng. 1411 (1782). With the successful resolution of Wilkes' long and bitter struggle for the right of the British electorate to be represented by men of their own choice, it is evident that, on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, English precedent stood for the proposition that the law of the land had regulated the qualifications of members to serve in parliament and those qualifications were not occasional but fixed. 16 Parl. Hist. Eng. 589, 590 (1769). Certainly English practice did not support, nor had it ever supported, respondents' assertion that the power to judge qualifications was generally understood to encompass the right to exclude members-elect for general misconduct not within standing qualifications. With the repudiation in 1782 of the only two precedents for excluding a member-elect who had been previously expelled, [55] it appears that the House of Commons also repudiated any control over the eligibility of candidates, except in the administration of the laws which define their [standing] qualifications. T. May's Parliamentary Practice 66 (13th ed. T. Webster 1924). See Taswell-Langmead, supra, at 585. [56] The resolution of the Wilkes case similarly undermined the precedential value of the earlier colonial exclusions, for the principles upon which they had been based were repudiated by the very body the colonial assemblies sought to imitate and whose precedents they generally followed. See Clarke, supra, at 54, 59-60, 196. Thus, in 1784 the Council of Censors of the Pennsylvania Assembly [57] denounced the prior expulsion of an unnamed assemblyman, ruling that his expulsion had not been effected in conformity with the recently enacted Pennsylvania Constitution. [58] In the course of its report, the Council denounced by name the Parliamentary exclusions of both Walpole and Wilkes, stating that they reflected dishonor on none but the authors of these violences. Pennsylvania Convention Proceedings: 1776 and 1790, p. 89 (1825). Wilkes' struggle and his ultimate victory had a significant impact in the American colonies. His advocacy of libertarian causes [59] and his pursuit of the right to be seated in Parliament became a cause cÚlebre for the colonists. [T]he cry of `Wilkes and Liberty' echoed loudly across the Atlantic Ocean as wide publicity was given to every step of Wilkes's public career in the colonial press . . . . The reaction in America took on significant proportions. Colonials tended to identify their cause with that of Wilkes. They saw him as a popular hero and a martyr to the struggle for liberty. . . . They named towns, counties, and even children in his honour. 11 Gipson, supra, at 222. [60] It is within this historical context that we must examine the Convention debates in 1787, just five years after Wilkes' final victory.