Thread: Qualifications for a Senator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate

Just doing some research and found this interesting.



Qualifications for a Senator

Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution sets forth three qualifications for Senators: each Senator must be at least thirty years old, must have been a citizen of the United States for at least the past nine years, and must be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state he or she represents. The age and citizenship qualifications for Senators are more stringent than those for Representatives. In The Federalist, James Madison justified this arrangement by arguing that the "senatorial trust" called for a "greater extent of information and stability of character."

Furthermore, under the Fourteenth Amendment, any federal or state officer who takes the requisite oath to support the Constitution, but later engages in rebellion or aids the enemies of the United States, is disqualified from becoming a Senator. This provision, which came into force soon after the end of the Civil War, was intended to prevent those who sided with the Confederacy from serving. The Amendment, however, provides that a disqualified individual may still serve if two-thirds of both Houses of Congress vote to remove the disability.

Under the Constitution, the Senate (not the courts) is empowered to judge if an individual is qualified to serve. During its early years, however, the Senate did not closely scrutinize the qualifications of members. As a result, three individuals that were Constitutionally disqualified due to age were admitted to the Senate: twenty-nine-year-old Henry Clay (1806), and twenty-eight-year-olds Armistead Mason (1816) and John Eaton (181. Such an occurrence, however, has not been repeated since. In 1934, Rush Holt was elected to the Senate at the age of twenty-nine; he waited until he turned thirty to take the oath of office.

Very interesting. States can have additional qualifications. Missouri has a residency requirement beyond that of the Constitution. I used to know what it was. It was an issue in a campaign I worked on. The opposition claimed the candidate lost his residency when he served as a Court Clerk in Georgia following graduation from Law School. But he had maintained property ownership; voted absentee, etc. It went to the courts and we prevailed.