Jefferson's Manual
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Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801, is the first American book on parliamentary procedure. As vice-president of the United States, Jefferson served as the Senate's presiding officer from 1797 to 1801. Throughout these four years, Jefferson worked on various texts and, in early 1801, started to assemble them into a single manuscript for the Senate's use. In 1801 he decided to have the manuscript printed.
The manual is arranged in fifty-three categories from (1) The Importance of Rules to (53) Impeachment. Each section includes the appropriate rules and practices of the British Parliament along with the applicable texts from the U.S. Constitution and the thirty-two Senate rules that existed in 1801.
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[edit] U.S. Senate
The Senate traditionally has not considered Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice to be its direct authority on parliamentary procedure. However, starting in 1828 the Senate began publishing a version of Jefferson's Manual for their use, removing the Senate Rules from within the text and placing them in a separate section. In 1888, when the Senate initiated publication of the Senate Manual, a copy of Jefferson's Manual was included in each biennial edition. This practice continued until 1977.
[edit] U.S. House of Representatives
The House of Representatives formally incorporated Jefferson's Manual into its rules in 1837, stipulating that the manual "should govern the House in all cases to which they are applicable and in which they are not inconsistent with the standing rules and order of the House and the joint rules of the Senate and the House of Representatives." Since then, the House has regularly printed an abridged version of the Manual in its publication entitled Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives. [1]
Jefferson's Manual was based on notes Jefferson took while studying parliamentary procedure at the College of William and Mary.[2] A second edition with added material by Jefferson was printed in 1812.
[edit] Impeachment
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This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
Statements claiming that Thomas Jefferson wrote the text in the Jefferson's Manual allowing for state initiatives for impeachment has made its way around the world wide web and even into some state petitions and resolutions for impeachement of Bush and Cheney. It is commonly repeated that Thomas Jefferson wrote in Section 603 of his Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States that “In the House there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion,” including “by charges transmitted from the legislature of a State or territory." The attribution of this part of the rules to Jefferson is false. This verbiage was added later as the rules of the House changed through time. In Thomas Jefferson's original version, the section on "Impeachment" is numbered 53, and it is the last section of his text. Similarly, in the original there is no section 603, and Jefferson simply did not write the quote on "various methods of setting an impeachment in motion."
The mistake comes from a misreading of the House of Representatives' "House Rules and Manual," as disseminated online."Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives, 109th Congress," (House Document No. 108-241). The House document does contain the complete text of Jefferson's Manual, but it also includes commentary (and authorities for that commentary) on subsequent practice. When you retrieve this document online, you have a choice between "Text" and "PDF" versions. The "Text" version is the source of the problem; there Jefferson’s words on impeachment and the congressional gloss are indistinguishable (The “Text” version, in general, is extremely difficult to sort out). In the PDF version of the congressional publication, however, you can clearly see the different fonts that were used to distinguish Jefferson’s words from subsequent commentary. You can see that the statements so widely being attributed to Jefferson are part of the "House Rules and Manual," but were never part of Jefferson’s text. In the original format, you can also easily see the headings. The House document (not Jefferson’s Manual) labels this section “§603 Inception of Impeachment Proceedings in the House.”
[edit] References
- ^ C-SPAN Glossary
- ^ New Edition of Jefferson Parliamentary Manual Published, Library of Congress press release
