us-house-of-reps
Is the US House of Representatives legally required to elect a Speaker before House business can begin?
<p>Suppose that an incoming House of Representatives fails to elect a new Speaker. Is there a way for the incoming Representatives to conduct House business without electing a new Speaker, or are the incoming Representatives doomed by the law until a new Speaker is elected?</p>
<p>For example, the swearing in of new Representatives traditionally does not happen until after a Speaker is elected. Absent a Speaker, can new Representatives be sworn in? If not, is the swearing in of a new Representative-elect necessary before said Representative-elect has all the duties and rights of a Representative?</p>
<p>The Speaker also sets the legislative agenda, forms committees, etc. Without a Speaker, can the House set a legislative agenda, form committees, etc.?</p>

<p>The constitution says &quot;Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.&quot;  Legally speaking, if the House of Representatives can organize itself without electing a speaker and can pass rules that allow it to conduct business despite not having elected a speaker, then any bills it passes can continue to be considered as usual.</p>
<p>The tradition of electing a speaker before swearing in the members is just that (a tradition), so it would be possible to break with tradition and swear the members in without a speaker in place.</p>
<p>The house could establish any other mechanism for setting agendas and forming committees by passing a rule to that effect.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, however, a house that cannot elect a speaker is also unlikely to be able to pass a resolution establishing its rules, since this is a more complex question than the election of a speaker, and it furthermore seems unlikely that such a house would be unable to pass any but the most uncontroversial bills.</p>
<p>It also seems most likely that the easiest way to deal with an inability to elect a speaker would be to reach some sort of compromise on that question and then to proceed with the traditional order of affairs, rather than to try to redesign the parliamentary functioning of the house from the ground up, and history shows that this is in fact what has happened in cases where electing a speaker proved difficult.</p>
