LEGISLATIVE REORGANIZATION ACTS: Act of 1946

. . h'story
more authoritative, to find ways that
1
Islauve can more clearly signal its meaning and
c0 ngress
. d' iary better interpret statutes.
1
the JU .fycing statutory meaning has at least three
1
can
.
h at
he
first
is
in
some
sense
preventative;
t
T
and to
P
. arts.
. eks to anticipate potent1'al d'ffi
1 cu1ties
IS It se
. b
}
, with them before a bill ecomes a aw. As
1
deah it goes to the heart of the drafting process.
sue ,
f
h
. 1
The second compone~t o~uses on t. e materia s
that constitute legislative history an~ IS g.eared to' d finding ways for Congress to signal Its mean: ;more clearly. The third part entails developing
utinized means so that, after the enactment of
ro
h
.
.h
.
legislation, courts that ave expenence Wit particular statutes can transmit their opinions to Congress, identifying problems for legislative consideration. In fact, a major project, sponsored by the
Governance Institute with the support of representatives of both branches, was under way in the mid
1990s; it sought to bridge the gap between legislators who make legislative history and those who digest it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eslaidge, William N., Jr. Statutory Interpretation. Virginia
Law Review 74 (1988): 275, 320.
Eslaidge, William N., Jr., and Philip P. Frickey. (/Legislation Scholarship and Pedagogy in the Post-Legal Era."
University of Pittsburgh Law Review 48, no. 3 (Spring
1987): 691-731.
Hart, Henry M., Jr., and Albert Sacks. The Legal Process:
Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law.
1958.
Katzmann, Robert A. "Bridging the Statutory Gulf be-

tween Courts and Congress: A Challenge for Positive

Political Theory." Georgetown Law Journal 87 (1992):
653-669.
Katzmann, Robert A., ed. Judges and Legislators. 1988.
Landis, James. ttA Note on Statutory Interpretation."
Harvard Law Review 43 (1930): 886-901.
Uewellyn, Karl N. The Common Law Tradition: Deciding
Appeals. 1960.
Uewellyn, Karl N. ~~Remarks on the Theory of Appellate
De 10

and the Rules or Canons about How Statutes

Are to Be Construed." Vanderbilt lAw Review 3 ( 1950):
Cl

395-410.
Sutherland , J G. Statutes and Statutory Constructton.

4th
ed 1972.
ROBERT

A. K.ATZMANN

~~;;st~TIVE REORGANIZAT~ON
si01 [ThLS entry includes two separate dzscusCtJ.s:ioof the acts of 1946 and 1970. For related disn, see Reorganization of Congress.]

1279

Act of 1946
The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 (P.L.
79-601; 60 Stat. 812-852) reduced the number of
standing committees from 48 to 19 in the House
and from 33 to 15 in the Senate. The act codified
committee jurisdictions, set rules for how committees should function, directed committees to maintain u continuous watchfulness" over the executive
branch, and put in place procedures for regulating
lobbyists. The act also initiated a new congressional budget process through which the appropriations committees of both chambers would jointly
prepare budgets. These fiscal reforms, never completely implemented, were abandoned within three
years.
The most significant and unanticipated impact of
the act was on congressional staffs. Largely because of processes that the act set in motion, the
number of congressional staffers doubled from
1946 to 1956 and then doubled again by 1966. This
expansion of the Capitol Hill work force put Congress on a more even footing with the president following two decades of rapid growth in the executive branch.
In response to hostile public criticism of Congress, the Joint Committee on the Organization of
Congress was formed in 1945. Cochaired by Sen.
Robert M. La Follette, Jr. (Prog.-Wis.), and Rep.
A. S. Mike Monroney (D-Okla.), the Joint Committee hired George Galloway, a policy analyst associated with the Brookings Institution, as staff
director. Galloway, La Follette, and Monroney
crafted the act.
Impetus for the act came from widespread concern among lawmakers that the balance of power
was tilting toward the president. While the fe~eral
government's executive branch grew dramatically
in the 1930s and 1940s, at the close of World War II
Congress was making do with staffing levels and
committee jurisdictions that were legacies
the
1800s. In 1946, all House and Senate co~~te~s
combined had just 356 employees, including _J~rutors and stenographers. Meanwhile, ~ublic 0 prmon
polls berated a lido-nothing Congress for obstructing the president.
.
.
The Joint Committee held heanngs dunng the
.
f 1945 and in testimony before the panel
spnng o
'
f b .
ked
many legislators complained o eing o envor .
by an ostensibly archaic and fragmented committee s stem. It was often said that House _members
manv as eiaht standing committees, but
y
were on as
~
o
this actually held true for onl one pe~son, a mlemdbe on all the committees reate
ber w h o an t ed to

o!

LEGISLATIVE RE

1280

ORGANIZATION ACTS: Act of 1946

solidated along lines that reinforced prereforrn
coalitions. For ex~mp~e, befo.r~ the reform act the
Public Lands, Irrigation, Mining, Indian Affairs
and Insular Affairs committees coordinated activi~
ties and shared many members. They were, for all
intents and purposes, behaving like subcommittees
and it was no surprise that these five committees
were combined in the act to create one Committee
on Interior and Insular Affairs.
As for clarifying committee jurisdictions by writing them into the House and Senate rules, the act
did little more than copy into the rules what had
long been in the books of precedents maintained by
the House and Senate parliamentarians. To alter
the committee system radically would have been
tantamount to overhauling Congress's internal
power structure. Instead, that power structure was
consolidated by reducing the number of committee
chairs and by encouraging expanded oversight of
the executive branch.
In debates about the act on the House and Senate
floors, controversy surrounded a 25 percent pay increase included in the measure. The bill also extended the Civil Service Retirement Act to cover
lawmakers. Committee sizes were adjusted to give
most committees twenty-five or twenty-seven members (numbers easily inflated by later Congresses),
and the bill-drafting service and Legislative Reference Service were greatly expanded. The final version of the 1946 Legislative Reorgaruzation Act
passed the Senate overwhelmingly (by voice vote)
on 26 July 1946 after clearing the House 229 to 61
a day earlier.
When President Harry S. Truman signed Public
Law 79-601 on 2 August 1946, congressional reformers had high hopes that the consolidation of
committees and the new budget process would
stand the test of time. However, the budget process
wa.s scrapped within three years, loopholes were
quickly found in the act's lobbying regulations, and
committee reforms were undermined by the growing number of subcommittees. By the early 1970s,
the number of subcommittees in the House and
Senate had nearly doubled, spurring calls among
subcommittee chairs for more autonomy. Further~ore, by reducing the number of committee cha~rs
In 1946, the power of remaining committee chairs
was strengthened, which helped set the stage for
new reforms in the 1970s.
I

Democratic leadership in Congress had hoped that reform and reorganization of Congress would be popular with voters and improve the public's outlook on the legislature. This political cartoon
presents Senate majority leader Alben W. Barkley (D-Ky.)
and .Hou~e Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.) wooing the
pub~c, With the Legislative Reorganization bill. John Q .
Public s reply reveals the cartoonist's skepticism over the
political gains the Democrats would reap from the reform. In the November elections after the bill was
p~sed, the Democrats were. in fact voted out of power.
Clifford K. Berryman, Washtngton Evening Star. 28 July
CONGRESSIONAL REFORM.

1946.

U.S. SENATE COLLECTION CENTER FOR LEG

I

lSLATIVE ARCHIVES

to the one he chaired. Of Democrats wh

.
.
o were not
a1so commlttee chairs 77 8 percent
served on only
one standing committee. The probl
. 1
.
em was not mul
tlp e committee memberships but th
.
provide legislators with staff suffi . e failure to
h h
Wit t e expanding scope of th Cient to keep up

eoneortwo
m1ttees on which they served A .
coml~gacy of the act was the rapid g;~~hthe lasting
SI~nal staff that followed. In 1946 howe of p~ofes
mittee reorganization" became a 'rall . ver, comwas pushed onto the editorial
Ying cry that
newspapers.
pages of leading
Even though the number of comm'tt
by two-thirds the act should
1 ees was cut
'
not
neces
'1 b
seen as marking the birth of th
d
sari
y e
e mo em co
.
s~stem. For the most part, the act d 'd
mmittee
tised, realign jurisdictions In th HI not, as adver.

e ouse t
f h
nineteen postreform committees we
, e? o t e
untouched. The remaining com 'tre carried over
ffil tees were con1

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Byrd,

Robert C. "Congressional Reform: The Legislative

Reorganization Act of 1946." In vol. 1 of The Sellate,

1281

LEGISLATIVE SERVIC E ORGANIZATIONS

. Addresses on the History of the United States
9
1789-198 .

1988
Senate. R r H ~~The Advent of the Modern Con"
f
. .
.
.d on, oge
Da\l . The Legislative Reorgani zation Act o 1946. Leggres St dies Quarterly 15 (1990): 357-373.
tslauve u
DAVID C. KING

Act of 1970
Th Legislative Reorgan ization Act of 1970 (P.L.
_5~0; 84 Stat. 1140-1204) was the first_ maj_or legislative reform bill enacted after the Legislat ive Reorganization Act of 19~6. The 1970 a~t encour~ged
open committee meetings and heanngs , re~uired
that committee roll-call votes be made pubbc, allowed for television and radio broadca sting of
House committee hearings , and formaliz ed rules
for debating conferen ce committ ee reports. Many
of these reforms were adopted in the name of opening up the legislative process to the public eye. The
reform of longest-lasting significance provide d that
House votes in the Commit tee of the Whole be
recorded on request, which ended the secrecy often
surrounding members ' votes on importa nt measures.
Within a decade after the 1946 reorgan ization
act, a handful of reform-m inded legislato rs had
begun calling for revisions to deal with the act's
unanticipated conseque nces. By reducing the number of committee chairme n while strength ening
congressional oversigh t of the executiv e branch, the
act greatly expanded the chairme n's power. In party
ca~c~ses, seniority was the guiding rule for apPOinting committee chairme n. A dispropo rtionate
number of chairmen were long-ser ving southern
De~ocrats who effectively vetoed a more liberal soCla welfare and civil rights agenda through out the
1950s and much of the 1960s.
tIn 1965, Congress establish ed the Joint Commit
ee on the Or
garuzat1on of Congres s headed by Sen.
A S .
Madd MJ~ Monroney (D-Okla.) and Rep_ Ray J .
in ~n ( -Ind.). The joint committ ee's final report
rnen ~ec~mmended limiting the powers of chairrnen~s r~1 ucing. the number of committ ee assignthe L~ ~Pr?Vlng committee staffs, and expandi ng
.
g1s attve Reference Service
(later renamed
the Con r .
Senate g essional Research Service) . In 1967 the
ioint C:~ss~d a, hill (S. 355) largely based o~ the
languished~lttee s recomm endation s, but the bill
Sition r..._ In the House in the face of fierce oppolrorn com .
m1ttee chairme n.
In a
.
that
rnove
li
s~rpnsed most observer s, two
ouse Rules
Commttt ee member s, B. F. Sisk (D-

91

Calif.) and Richard W. Bolling (D-Mo.), pushed for

a special subcom mittee to consider legislativ e reform in 1969. The result was House Report 911215, which became the basis for the 1970 Legislative Reorgan ization Act. Most of the provisio ns in
the 1970 bill opened up the legislativ e process
through what are called sunshin e provisio ns (i.e.,
measure s that increase public access by "letting the
sunshin e in" on legislativ e proceedi ngs). Very few
of the proposa ls to limit the powers of committ ee
chairme n and to weaken seniority that had been
discusse d by the 1969 joint committ ee survived in
the bill.
In ten days of floor debate, 65 amendm ents were
consider ed. A package of ten amendm ents (nine of
which passed) was presente d on the House floor by
a bipartis an coalition of reforme rs. The House
passed its version of the reorgani zation act 326 to
19 on 17 Septemb er 1970. The Senate made minor
changes , passing the bill 59 to 5 on 6 October, and
the House accepted the Senate's modifica tions on 8
October.
The Legislat ive Reorgan ization Act of 1970 was a
harbing er of things to come. While limitatio ns on
seniority were modest, within a year the House and
Senate had passed resolutio ns stating that the selection of committ ee chairme n need not be based
solely on seniority . In 1973, the House "Subcom mittee Bill of Rights" mandate d that legislati on be
referred to subcomm ittees, further weakeni ng the
power of the chairme n of full committ ees.
[See also Governm ent in the Sunshin e Act.]
BffiLIOG RAPHY
Davidson , Roger H. ~~Inertia and Change: The Legislative
Reorgani zation Act of 1970." In On Capitol Hill. Edited
by John F. Bibby and Roger H. Davidson . 2d ed. 1972.
Kravitz, Walter. "The Advent of the Modern Congress:
The Legislativ e Reorgani zation Act of 1970." Legislative
Studies Quarterly 15 (August 1990): 375-399.
DAVID

C.

KING

196

LEGIS LATIV E SERV ICE ORGA NIZATIONS . A special type of informa l caucus created
under House regulatio ns, a legislativ e service organization (LSO) is a congressional caucus, committee, coalition , or similar group that "operate [s]
solely to provide legislativ e services or other assistance to . . . m embers . . . in the perform ance of
their official duties." Such groups must (a) consist
solely of House member s or member s of both bodies; (b) receive support from the House (office