Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T00:27:06.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Senate Judiciary Committee: Qualifications of Members

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David G. Farrelly
David G. Farrelly
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In many of our modern industries, aptitude tests are given to new employees in order to determine the type of position for which each worker is best fitted. Unfortunately, in legislative bodies committee assignments are dependent upon several factors, only one of which is specialized ability. To serve the public best, however, no one can truthfully deny that individual competence ought to be the basic reason for placing a legislator on the committee which can make the most advantageous use of his particular training and experience. Putting an international lawyer on an agriculture and forestry committee would be a sheer waste of talent. With these thoughts in mind, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been studied for the purpose of determining the qualifications of the 219 men who have been members of this body since it was established in 1816.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , June 1943 , pp. 469 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1943

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For methods and considerations used in the Senate to fill committee vacancies, see Haynes, G. H., The Senate of the United States, I, pp. 292–293Google Scholar, and Dennison, E., The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pp. 4–10.Google Scholar

2 Among the main duties of the Judiciary Committee are: (1) general original control over practically all proposed amendments to the Constitution; (2) approval or disapproval of presidential nominees for positions on United States courts; (3) consideration of changes in the federal court structure; (4) advising the Senate on matters relating to trusts, extradition, bankruptcy, federal prisons, etc.

3 Biographical material was compiled from several sources, but mainly from the Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774–1927, and the Congressional Directory (editions from 1850 to 1942).

4 McKinney, M., “The Personnel of the 77th Congress,” in this Review, Feb., 1942.Google Scholar

5 David Davis, indeed, had been an Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court.

6 According to The Book of the States, 1941–1942, p. 45, only 21 out of a total of 189 state constitutional conventions have been held since 1900.

7 Attendance at business schools or seminaries has not been included in this tabulation. Those senators who went to more than one college have been credited with attending a college. Members who received a law degree from a school, but whose record has given no indication that they studied other subjects, have not been included.

8 Stealey, O. O., Twenty Years in the Press Gallery, p. 127.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 62.

10 Important legislation passed by the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Congresses included (1) authorizing writs of error to the U. S. Supreme Court in capital cases; (2) authorizing a review by the Supreme Court of all judgments and decrees of inferior courts in respect to the question of jurisdiction of the trial court, and regardless of the amount in controversy; (3) passing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; and (4) establishing the Circuit Court of Appeals and defining the jurisdiction of United States courts generally.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.