Constitution

Article I, Section 2: The House of Representatives

Section 2 sets up the House: two-year terms, members chosen by the people, the census, apportionment, vacancies, the Speaker and the impeachment power.

4Conservative Editors · Published November 8, 2026

The text

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Note: The third paragraph (Clause 3) was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment, which ended the three-fifths count. The 16th amendment later freed income taxes from apportionment.

In plain English

Clause 1: election. House members serve two-year terms and are chosen "by the People." Anyone allowed to vote for the larger house of a state's own legislature may vote for the House. The Constitution left voter qualifications to the states; later amendments (the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th) forbade particular exclusions.

Clause 2: qualifications. A Representative must be at least 25, a citizen for seven years, and an inhabitant of the state when elected. The Constitution does not require living in the district.

Clause 3: apportionment and the census. House seats, and any "direct Taxes," are divided among the states by population. A count, the "actual Enumeration," must be taken every ten years. The original formula counted three-fifths of enslaved persons ("all other Persons"), a compromise the 14th Amendment replaced with a count of "the whole number of persons." The clause also caps the House at one member per 30,000 people, guarantees each state at least one seat, and lists the seats for the first Congress, 65 in all.

Clause 4: vacancies. When a seat opens, the governor calls a special election. House seats are never filled by appointment.

Clause 5: officers and impeachment. The House chooses its own Speaker and has "the sole Power of Impeachment," that is, the power to bring charges. The Senate tries them (Section 3).

What the Founders said

The House was meant to be the branch closest to the people. In Federalist No. 52 Madison wrote that it was "essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people," and that the House in particular "should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people." Frequent elections, every two years, were the means.

Federalist No. 54 defended the three-fifths formula as a compromise between treating enslaved people as persons and as property; it is one of the papers that shows most plainly the bargain slavery forced on the Convention. Federalists No. 55 and 56 answered the Anti-Federalist complaint that 65 members were too few to know a continent's interests. The Federal Farmer and other critics wanted a larger House, and the first amendment Congress proposed in 1789 (never ratified) would have set a ratio of members to population.

How the courts have read it

  • Wesberry v. Sanders (1964): "by the People of the several States" requires congressional districts within a state to be as nearly equal in population as practicable.
  • Powell v. McCormack (1969): the House cannot exclude a member-elect who meets the age, citizenship and inhabitancy requirements.
  • U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995): states may not add qualifications, such as term limits, for members of Congress.
  • Department of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives (1999): the Census Act forbids statistical sampling to produce apportionment counts.
  • Utah v. Evans (2002): the Census Bureau's "hot-deck imputation" method did not violate the "actual Enumeration" requirement.
  • Department of Commerce v. New York (2019): the Court blocked a citizenship question on the 2020 census because the government's stated reason was not the real one, while holding that asking such a question was not itself unconstitutional.

Why it matters now

The House was designed to stay close to voters, but its size has been frozen at 435 by statute since the early twentieth century while the population has more than tripled. A member now represents roughly three-quarters of a million people, far beyond what the Framers imagined. Whether to enlarge the House is a fair question for constitutionalists of every stripe, and it is one Congress can answer by ordinary law.

The census clause is a constitutional duty, not a policy preference. The text says "actual Enumeration," and the count drives the distribution of political power among the states. Who is counted, and how accurately, deserves the scrutiny conservatives have given it.

Finally, the House holds the power of impeachment alone. That is a grave tool meant for grave misconduct. Using it as an ordinary partisan weapon weakens the one institution the Framers trusted most to speak for the people.

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