House of Representatives

As established in the Constitution of the United States of America, the US House of Representatives makes and approves federal laws. The House and the Senate make up the two chambers of Congress, both integral parts of the legislative branch of the federal government. Since 1911, the number of voting representatives in the House has been capped at 435, proportionally representing the population of the fifty states. The number of representatives allowed each state is relative to its population. Each representative, also known as a congressman or congresswoman, is elected to a two-year term representing the population of his or her congressional district. Representatives have various obligations, such as introducing bills and resolutions and serving on committees. In order to be elected, a representative must be at least twenty-five years old, a United States citizen, and a resident of the state they represent.

Brief History

The First Continental Congress, a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen American colonies, took place in 1774. During the American Revolutionary War in 1775, representatives of all thirteen colonies convened in the Second Continental Congress. On July 4, 1776, the Congress declared the colonies independent states, naming them the United States of America. The Congress managed the war efforts and continued to serve as the government during the war. Besides abrogating the duties of appointing ambassadors, disbursing funds, issuing money, appointing generals and others, it also produced the Articles of Confederation, which served as the nation’s first constitution, and was ratified by the states in 1781.

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was a unicameral body. That is, it had not yet developed into the House and the Senate. Each state was represented equally and had veto powers as well. However, the system did not prove effective in binding all states to the legislation it passed, so Congress summoned the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in which the organization of Congress was a paramount issue. Some supported the Virginia Plan, which called for a bicameral Congress in which the lower house would be elected by the people and the upper house by the lower house, with representation in both houses proportional to each state’s population. Others supported the New Jersey Plan, which proposed a unicameral Congress with equal representation for all states. A compromise was reached in which one house of Congress, known as the House of Representatives, would be based on proportional representation, while the other, known as the Senate, would offer equal representation.

The Constitution, ratified by 1788, was fully implemented in 1789. The head officer of the House of Representatives was named the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is elected by the majority party and, in addition to being the spokesperson for the majority party, is in charge of managing the House proceedings, appointing committee members, and referring bills to committees, among other duties. The Speaker is also second in line, after the vice president, to succeed the president. The leader of the opposition in Congress is known as the minority leader.

The role of the Speaker became very powerful in the House of Representatives, and many Speakers have had an important role in influencing politics. Particularly prominent Speakers in the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century included Henry Clay, Thomas Brackett Reed, Joseph Gurney Cannon, and Sam Rayburn.

Originally, the size of the House typically grew along with the overall size of the population. However, Congress passed the Apportionment Act of 1911 (Public Law 62-5), which limited the number of House of Representatives seats to 435 (including two seats once Arizona and New Mexico gained statehood in 1912). The Reapportionment Act of 1929 then established the official method for apportioning those 435 seats based on population, with each state allocated at least one seat. (Two additional temporary seats were added when Alaska and Hawaii gained statehood in 1959, but the number then returned to 435.) The cap on the number of representatives meant that states could gain or lose representation based on the results of the US Census held every ten years.

Every so often, Congress has had to consider other ways to adapt its processes to current times. One of these cases was the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970. By the late 1960s, the House realized that the role of the committee chair had become extraordinarily powerful. In 1969, the House Rules Committee organized a special subcommittee to look into the issue, called the Subcommittee on Legislative Reorganization. The subcommittee drafted a bill and held hearings, and after revisions, the bill was presented to the House Rules Committee in 1970. The House debated the bill and passed it by an overwhelming majority vote of 326 to 19. It was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in October 1970. In essence, the act focused on reducing the power of a committee chair while increasing the power of minority members, as well as making the procedures of both chambers more transparent to the public.

The House of Representatives Today

The House of Representatives naturally reflects broader political trends in the country, especially the dynamic between dominant political parties. From 1931 to 1994, the Democrats controlled the House, with the two notable exceptions of the Eightieth Congress (1947–49) and the Eighty-Third Congress (1953–55). In 1994, Republicans became a majority. This election, known as the Republican Revolution, gave Republicans both congressional houses. Between 2007 and 2011, Democrats briefly regained control of the House of Representatives and elected Nancy Pelosi as the first woman Speaker of the House. When Republicans returned to the majority in 2011, she was succeeded by John Boehner. Democrats held majority control once again between 2019 and 2022, with Pelosi returning to the role. When Republicans gained the majority in 2023, they elected Kevin McCarthy as speaker. However, he only held the position until October 2023, becoming the first speaker in the history of the US House of Representatives to be successfully removed from the position. He was replaced by Mike Johnson.

Between 1911, when Congress capped the number of seats at 435, and the first decade of the twenty-first century, the population of the United States more than tripled. As a result, some observers began to call for increasing the number of House seats proportionately. One prominent proposal held that the House should increase its seats using a formula known as the Wyoming Rule. The formula would give the least populous state—which remained Wyoming according to the 2020 US census—a single representative and make the standard representative-to-population ratio of all other states equal to that of the state with the smallest population. The debate earned fresh attention in the wake of the 2020 census. Initial data released in 2021 indicated that population shifts, particularly growth in western and southern states, meant that changes would be made to House representation for thirteen states. Notably, traditionally Democratic states including New York, California, and Illinois each lost one seat in the House based on the 2020 population numbers, while Republican-leaning states such as Texas, Montana, and Florida gained seats. As the total number of seats remained capped at 435, discussions continued to revolve around concerns such as redistricting powers and gerrymandering.

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