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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Can the House have a Speaker who isn’t an elected official? Has that ever happened before where the Speaker of the House wasn’t a Representative?
Afaik it's not explicitly ruled out by the Constitution, though it's never been done. It would be very unorthodox, especially if the speaker were in prison.
It can happen. However, it is generally not done because the House wants to be in charge of itself.
This was the first article I was able to find, as the question has apparently come up as recently as after John Boehner vacated the position: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/can-outsider-be-speaker-house-n441926
" The Constitution is silent on that question, saying simply, "The House of Representatives shall chuse (sic) their Speaker and other Officers."
The Clerk of the House agrees with the office of the House Historian, which says the speaker "has always been (but is not required to be) a House Member."
Most historians and legal experts who've looked at this issue conclude the founders simply assumed the speaker would be drawn from among elected members.
"It would have been unthinkable for the most populous house not to have its leader be part of the representatives who were elected by the people," says David Forte, a constitutional scholar at Cleveland State University.
"Nothing fits that would make the speaker anything other than a member of the house," except for the Constitution's silence on the issue, Forte says, noting that the Articles of Confederation said members of Congress shall have authority "to appoint one of their members to preside." "
Gotta love how the vagueness of the Founding Fathers is cause for serious debate after they just assumed something was obvious.
Welcome to why we have a mass shooting everyday. A comma and poof, no more well regulated required.
The USA was probably the most experienced in writing constitutions at the time, both on a national scale and a state scale. Even then, there wasn't that much experience compared to today and a failure of a state government could easily be corrected by the King. These were smart men trying to create a workable compromise, but they weren't perfect.
They were all educated and well connected, but I think it'd be a stretch to say they were all smart. I don't know if we have enough information to make that claim. I don't like the worship of the founding fathers. They likely weren't particularly special people, but their circumstances were.
I don't think it is hero worship to say they were smart.
We have letters of enough of them to get an idea that they understood and could debate on a wide variety of topics. They were also able to put together a surprisingly stable government at a time when this wasn't guaranteed.
They were all flawed men in their own ways, but I wouldn't call them stupid.