 So today I'll talk just a little bit at first about why congressional procedure matters, why it's important, followed by an introduction to the rules that govern procedure in Congress and then of course where you can find these rules. And then finally, it's a really big topic, but I thought I would share what I think are five like really important facts that everyone should know about congressional procedure at the end of the day today. So first, like why do we care about this topic and by we, I mean the collective we, not only we foremost as librarians and researchers, but also as citizens, I think this is an important topic to be aware of. So the main reason it's pretty important, especially for us as librarians and trying to help our patrons find congressional information is that these rules guide the process for how laws are made. So here is a really great graphic displaying the traditional path of a bill as it works its way from introduction to becoming law. And this path, like I said, is guided by these rules of procedure that we're talking about today. And the most important thing to know is that, well, this is considered to be the traditional path of a bill as it makes its way through Congress. There are a lot of deviations to this path that are allowed and driven by the rules. So it's important to be aware of this again in terms of helping our patrons find information, particularly when, you know, the history of a given bill deviates from what we tend to think of as how a bill usually proceeds through Congress. So that's a big reason why it's important. But you don't take my word for it. And let's see what some of the real experts on this topic have to say about the importance of congressional procedure. So first we have John Dingle, who is a former U.S. representative and the longest serving member of Congress. And he has a really famous quote where he says, I'll let you write the substance of a law and you let me write the procedure and I'll screw you every time. And basically what he's saying here is pointing out that control and mastery of congressional procedures can really have a big impact on lawmaking. As we'll talk a little bit about today, they can affect, you know, the substance of a law as well as whether a law gets passed at all. From a research perspective, this topic is also really important because as highlighted here by Victoria Norse, who's a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, as well as a former congressional staffer, she points out that there are significant dangers to roaming around legislative history with no appreciation for congressional procedure. And basically Professor Norse researches and writes a lot about the importance of lawyers and judges really understanding well how Congress works and undergrants standing congressional procedure because if they don't, it can lead to misinterpretations of legislative history. So, right, judges often look to the legislative history of a particular law to interpret the meaning of those laws. And the outcome of the case can really turn on their interpretation. So, it's important for lawyers and judges, law students, and again, I think just citizens to understand how procedure can impact legislative history so that we can interpret it correctly. All right, so that's why I think this is an important topic. Now just a little more introduction to the rules. So here today I'm talking about the rules of procedure for Congress. So these are the internal rules that Congress adopts for itself that guides how it proceeds in its lawmaking and other activities. I'm primarily talking about what are known as the standing rules of the House and Senate, but there are other sources of rules of procedure that I'll get into as well. So first, where does the authority to create these rules come from? Right, so where does Congress get the authority to establish its rules of procedure? Well, it comes from the US Constitution. Article 1, Section 5, clause 2 is known as the Rules of Proceedings Clause. It basically says that each House may determine the rules of its proceedings. And this has been interpreted pretty broadly. So Congress has a lot of authority to set its own rules and interpret its own rules. So in terms of how these rules go about then getting adopted is the House and Senate each have their own set of standing rules. They used to have shared rules, but now that each have their own and how they adopt them is a little bit different. So first in the House of Representatives, the House adopts new rules for each Congress, on each Congress's two years. And it expires at the end of that Congress. They're actually drafted by the majority party in advance and then adopted as a House resolution at the beginning of the new Congress. So each Congress has basically its own new set of rules. And then in terms of amending the rules other than when it's adopted each time, this is usually done through the passage of a House resolution. In the Senate, it's a little different. Since the Senate considers itself a continuing body, right? So unlike the House, which turns over every election, basically a third of the Senate can change every couple of years. They don't re-adapt new rules each time. Basically the rules of the Senate continue to be in effect until amended. In terms of amending the Senate rules, they also often do it by Senate resolution, but it's a little different than in the House, which is just a simple majority. In the Senate, you probably know when something is up for a vote, whether it's a bill or resolution or change the rules, there can actually be two votes. The first vote is to the vote to end debate on the measure before the Senate and proceed to a vote. And then ultimately, the vote on the measure before the Senate. In the Senate, you have to have a super majority. So two-thirds of senators agree to end debate on a proposed resolution, change the rules, and ultimately proceed to a vote. So this is where a filibuster comes in to play. So they need two-thirds of the senators to agree that they'll stop debate, potentially end the filibuster, and then proceed to amend the Senate rules. Okay, so that is how the Senate goes about usually changing their rules. Although I'll talk about a really interesting way that they basically get around some of their stringent amendment procedures at the end. So that's how they're adopted in the House and Senate. And as I said, they each have their own rules and they are quite different. The differences between the House and Senate rules are driven in large part by the differences between these two bodies, right? So they are very different in size, right? We have the House with over 400 members in the Senate with only about 100. So in the House, it's much bigger, right? There's a lot more people to kind of keep in line. And membership changes every two years. And this is very different from the Senate where it's much smaller, right? You have staggered six-year terms of the senators and so a little bit more continuity. So in the House, there are more rules which can be changed more frequently. It's very structured with more strict adherence to their rules and a guiding principle in how the House operates is simply, right? Majority rules. And this is reflected in their rules themselves, right? In the Senate, again, it's smaller. So they've got fewer rules that aren't changed as often, a little less strict adherence to their rules. And the rules are often guided by a real respect for the minority party in the Senate. It's not that the Senate doesn't follow their rules or they ignore their rules again. It's more that there aren't as many rules and they don't amend them very often, right? So a lot of situations arise where, right? There's no rule on point and they have to figure out what to do. Okay, so what do these rules cover, these various rules of procedure? And we'll look at some examples in a moment. They cover a lot. They cover how bills are debated. They cover voting. They cover how amendments can be made. So a lot of these really substantive components of lawmaking. But they also cover things like committee appointments and staff, various financial issues like disclosure and acceptance of gifts. There's also quite a bit in there on decorum, which I think is some of the more kind of interesting pieces. So decorum and things like smoking. And also right of interest to this group, rules dealing with documentation and record keeping, which I of course also think are very interesting and well. So here's a couple of examples from the Senate rule on debate and I'll show you the kind of the equivalent in the house as well. So in the Senate rule on debate, and these are the Senate scanning rules. So for example, like I said, there's a lot of things on decorum. So it says, when a senator desires to speak, he shall rise and address the presiding officer, and shall not proceed until he's recognized. The presiding officer shall recognize the senator who shall first address him. Right, so kind of very formal how you go about proceeding to speak and debate on the floor of the Senate. Also, no senator in debate shall directly or indirectly by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming of the senator, right? So no crashing each other in the Senate. And then you also can refer offensively to another member's state. So it's kind of interesting. On the house side, kind of very similar rules setting up debate and decorum. A member of the house who desires to speak or deliver a matter to the house shall rise and respectfully address the speaker. And on being recognized, may address the house from any place on the floor. Also, when a member is speaking, the rules say that you cannot pass between the person talking and the chair. So another example is decorum on the house floor. And then again, keep it respectful, keep it professional. Remarks and debates, which may include references to the Senate or its members, shall be confined to the question under debate avoiding personality. So this is just one example of the rules. Again, just dealing with how we'll debate bills and also things like decorum and procedure. So finally here in this section, who are the key players when we're talking about the rules of procedure in the house and Senate and how they set up their rules and follow their rules? So here's the key players that I've mentioned so far, at first, the chairs. So in the Senate, this is generally the, this is the presiding officer, which is usually the president pro tempore, which is the most senior member of the majority party, or very often has her designee. So a junior senator who gets appointed to be the chair. And then the house supports the speaker of the house. The chair plays a very important role because if an issue arises in the house or Senate on a question of whether something does or does not comply with the rules, they make the initial determination of whether or not it does. So they rule whether something is in order in compliance with the rules or out of order and not complying with the rules. Their decision can be appealed to the entire chamber, which then can vote on whether or not something violates the rules. But they do make the initial determination. Also, both the house and Senate have rules on committees. In the Senate, it is the Senate Committee on Rules Administration. And in the house, it is the House Committee on Rules. The House Committee plays a more central role than the Senate Committee, which I'll talk about a little bit more at the end. And then finally, both the Senate have parliamentarians. So these are individuals who are experts in congressional procedure. And they help the chairs decide on issues of procedure in the house and Senate when an issue arises. The parliamentarians' recommendations and decisions aren't binding, but because they are the experts, they are often followed. And they can have a really significant impact on legislation. For example, during the passage of the Affordable Care Act, at one point, whether or not the act was going to proceed to passage really did turn on the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian at the time. So these are really important individuals as well. So now in terms of where to find the rules. So where can you find the standing rules as well as some of the other rules and laws that guide procedure in the house? That's what I'll go through next. There will also be a handout that will be sent to you afterwards and posted on the webinar's website that has where you can find all these rules that I'm talking about as well as a list of other really great sources that provide background information as well as some additional explanation of congressional procedure. So the main sources of the rules and procedure in Congress. So far, like I said, I've been primarily talking about the standing rules that the House and Senate adopts for themselves. But there's also the US Constitution, right? So we saw that the US Constitution has a clause which enabled Congress to establish its own rules of procedure. And there's some other provisions as well, such as those dealing with quorum. The main rules that you think about are the standing rules, which we've been talking about. In addition to the standing rules, the House and Senate also have some other rules that guide their actions. In the Senate, the Senate also adopts what's called standing orders. Standing orders are very similar to rules. And they basically have the same effect as a rule. They're adopted by resolution and generally in effect until they're amended or repealed, but there is basically a difference in how standing orders get adopted. They're easier to adopt than a rule. So sometimes a standing order will be adopted rather than trying to make a rule change in the Senate, which can be hard. In the House, they also have what's called Jefferson's manual, which guides their proceedings. Jefferson's manual was actually created by Congress Jefferson when he was Vice President and then President of the Senate. It was originally meant to guide Senate procedure, but interestingly today, it's not followed in the Senate. But it is used in the House and it applies to the extent that it's applicable and not inconsistent with the standing rules of the House. Next, in addition to those sources of rules, there is also precedent. So precedent I mean essentially the rulings on procedure that can play an important role, an important role. So like I said, when an issue comes up on whether a given action violates the rules, it goes to the chair of the House or Senate who then decides whether or not a particular action complies with the rules or not. And those decisions do create precedent, which then guides later decisions on procedure in the House and Senate. And precedent can be very important. And then finally, there are some statutes as well as other resolutions, which impact congressional procedure. The main area that this comes into play is often for passage of the budget as well as appropriations legislation. There are a lot of laws which guide how Congress is supposed to proceed with adopting the budget and dealing with appropriations legislation. So those are kind of like the main sources of rules and procedure in Congress. A few of the things to be aware of are committee rules. So each of the committees have their rules of procedure as well. There are also internal party rules. So these would be the rules of the Republican conferences, what it's called, or the Democratic caucus. And these govern things, kind of like what you would expect. So things like how they're going to elect their party leaders, for example. Like the whip and the speaker and the majority leader and all those types of things. These aren't officially published, these internal party rules. You can often find them online. I think the Republican conference might make theirs readily available, for example, on the internet. And then finally, this wasn't complicated enough. We also just have informal practice and customs. So there's no published or adopted rule anywhere. It's just what the House or Senate tends to do. This is definitely important in the Senate. So one example of something the Senate does for which there's no written rule, as far as I know, are what are called holds in the Senate. Holds are kind of controversial. Basically, a senator can send a letter or a note to the majority or minority party leader of their party, saying what their preferences are for policies that get put forward in the given session of Congress, as well as their preferences for when legislation comes up. It's just a request, but these holds are often honored because otherwise, if they're ignored, a senator may choose to filibuster, right? And that would ultimately be a waste of the Senate's time. The holds are important. They're used often. They're often called the silent filibuster. And again, there's no rule for this. It's just something that they do. All right, so where are the standing rules as well as things like orders and Jefferson's manual published? So the Senate manual, the official title is much longer, but it's known as the Senate manual, contains the standing rules as well as the standing orders, laws, and other resolutions that affect a procedure and business in the Senate. And this is available on FDCIS, the government publishing office's website. It's basically prepared during the second session of each Congress by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. Right, the publication is known as the House Rules and Manual. And again, it has a longer name. It contains the standing rules of the House, as well as I mentioned, Jefferson's manual, as well as other laws and resolutions affecting procedure. This is prepared and published by the House Parliamentarian and printed as a House document. As I said before, the rules are put together in advance of the new Congress by the majority party. And then the publication of the new House Rules and the annual is authored by a resolution and then it's printed at the beginning of a new Congress. And as I said, both of these are available on FDCIS, as well as other sources. So in terms of finding precedent, which again, these are essentially kind of unwritten law, right? These are the decisions and rulings of the chairs on procedure or votes of the entire chamber on whether a given action complies with the rules or not. These are, while they are just a precedent and a decision that was made on the floor of the House and Senate, they are collected and published. On the Senate side, they are published in something called Riddick's Senate Procedure. This is a single volume that was actually last updated in 1992 by then Senate Parliamentarian Alan Fruman. I think an updated edition is in the works. But for now, this is the collection we do have of Senate precedents. Otherwise, to find them, a researcher would just have to consult the congressional record for incidents of when rulings on procedure have arisen. On the House side, we actually have three publications covering different time periods. So we have Heinz precedents, Cannon precedents, and then Deschler's precedents, which again, compile these decisions which have been made about whether or not a given action complies with the rules. And so what all of these contain is essentially a statement of the precedent that has been established and then citations to incidences where the issue has come up. And these are also all available on FDCIS as well. So here's just an example of a precedent and what information you can find in Riddick's. So Riddick's has a section on expunging matters from the congressional record. So the congressional record is the official record of debate and action on the floor of the House and Senate. It's not a verbatim transcript of what goes on, but it is the record that we have of debate. And so basically, there are precedents dealing with when a Senator can have something removed from the record, right? So the precedent that appears in Riddick's is saying that when matters have been placed in the record by unanimous consent under the precedents, they may be stricken out by a majority vote on motion as well as a unanimous consent. So unanimous consent, just a little background. The Senate does a lot by unanimous consent. It's basically they say we want to take a particular action by unanimous consent, which doesn't mean everyone has to agree to it. It just basically means as long as no one objects, we're going to proceed with a particular action. So right the President is saying if something has been placed in the record, it's fairly simple to have removed. You either need a majority vote to take it out, or again, you can have it taken out by using this unanimous consent procedure as well. So that is the precedent, and then Riddick's will list all the instances where things have been then expunged from the congressional record under this precedent. A lot of them, if you were to look this up in Riddick's, deal with remarks or documents referring to other Senators. Again, remember in the rules, you are not supposed to speak ill of your fellow Senators, but some of them are interesting. Like for example, one Senator accidentally referenced and put in the record some information from a confidential FBI report. So obviously that matter needed to be expunged. So those are the precedents. So they're pretty interesting, I think. So those are the basic sources where you can find the rules. There are a lot of rules. This is all really complicated. Like I said, you've got all the different sources of rules. You've got unwritten rules. There's various other reasons, helping someone research congressional procedure and figuring out why Congress did something, how they did something, what the authority for that particular action was can be really confusing. So in terms of just additional resources for finding these sources, I have, like I said, prepared a handout, which will be sent out with information on some of the really great texts that explain all of this. I relied heavily on these and understanding this all myself, as well as links to where you can find the publications I just talked about. And then also for information on congressional research, generally beyond just the rules, finding information like committee reports, where you can find the congressional record and debates in Congress. There are a lot of great resources out there for that, which I won't get into today. There's, of course, this great webinar series, like Linda mentioned. There'll be a session on congressional research in August. So if you're interested in this, I would definitely check out that webinar. Right, there's lots of great research guides. I know many people here in their library probably have a great research guide on legislative history or congressional information. There's also a lot of great videos online today. I know the Georgetown Law Library has a really great short video on researching legislative history. In other words, the key online resources for finding congressional information are, of course, ProQuest Congressional. Once you have access to that, as well as time online, those are both subscription resources. But in the area of congressional information, a lot is available for free. Commerce.gov is available for free. And that is where you can find information on the history of bills and legislation in Congress from the 70s. And then FDCIS, as I have mentioned as well, is where you can find a lot of congressional documents and congressional procedural documents. So last but not least, now what I think is to the most fun part of today are what I call the five facts about congressional procedure you can't live without. So this is really complex topic, really confusing, even for elected officials and their staff. I've been researching this for a while. I've attended several multi-day workshops, and I still only feel like I've scratched the surface. Like I said, there are House and Senate parliamentarians. There's full-time job. It is to understand this stuff. So it's just, like I said, a really fascinating yet obscure and complex topic. But I think there are five things that I've learned about that I think everyone should know. And so to make it fun, I've just created a BuzzFeed-style listicle. Okay, so first up, the most important thing to know is that schoolhouse rock lied to us, which I essentially mean legislation often does not follow that single linear path that I showed earlier in this presentation in which the little cartoon bill things about in the cartoon we've all seen and that students learn about in their civics and political science class. There are a lot of potential variations and nuances, like I said, that are enabled in part by these rules of procedure. So for example, just one example of how a deviation can occur. The Senate rules allow bills to originate in committee. So we're taught that a bill is introduced in the Senate, and then it's referred to a committee who holds hearings, et cetera, et cetera. The bills can actually originate in a committee. So you may have a patron who's trying to research the history of a law and find all the different versions of the bill, and they just can't find the version of the bill that was introduced. Well, that could be because there is no version that was introduced. The first version of the bill is the one in the committee, which you will see when the committee prepares their report on the bill to be sent to the full Senate. And this is actually what happened, for example, with the Affordable Care Act. It originated in committee. Number two, and this is, I think, one of the most important is that the rules are not self-enforcing. So Congress adopts these rules for themselves, but they're not mandatory. There's no one is a job in either chamber to enforce the rules, basically they can follow them or they cannot follow them. So if something happens near the House and Senate that violates the rules, it is up to a member of the House or Senate to raise what's called a point of order. So if someone does something that violates the rules of procedure, another member of the House and Senate may say raise a point of order, arguing that that action doesn't compile their rules of procedure. At that point, the decision goes to the chair who decides whether to sustain the point of order, agreeing that the action does violate the rules and can't proceed, or they can overrule it and they know this action does comply with the rules. But if no point of order is raised, there's no problem. Congress can just proceed with what they're doing and the resulting actions that they take are no less legal or binding. So they have these rules, but they can simply not follow them. And actually they do very frequently decide to waive the rules or suspend the rules in order to expedite the action they're taking or proceed in another way. Also really important to know for helping researchers who are looking for all the documents that are published while a bill is being considered and made into law, is that you don't need a conference committee to resolve differences in a version of a bill that's passed by the House and a version of the bill that's passed in the Senate, right? So students are often taught that a bill that gets passed in the bill is passed, one version of the Senate, one version of the House. It then has to be referred to a conference committee made up of members of both chambers who will then work out the differences in the bill throughout the final version, which then is voted on by both the House and Senate. And if they approve it, it goes on to the President to be signed and ultimately passed in the law. These days, there may not be a conference committee called to settle differences between a version of the bill passed in the House and the Senate. Conference committees are used less often in recent years in favor of alternative options. One option is known as amendment exchange or ping ponging. So basically this is just trading amendments back and forth between the House and Senate until an agreement is reached. And when this is taking place, it can be preceded by informal negotiations by the House and Senate, which of course there would be no official record. And this is a trend that we're having fewer and fewer conference committees. So most laws that are enacted, they are simply passed by one chamber and then passed by the other without amendment, right? So if the House passes a bill first, it goes to the Senate. A lot of the time, the Senate will simply pass it without amendments. For laws where there is what's called post passage bargaining when they each have a different version of a bill, about a third are involved in this ping ponging, for example, while only about 16% according to a recent study, Dota Conference. So there are the fewer conference committees. So if you're helping a researcher, research a piece of legislation where the House and Senate pass different versions and they're confused about why there isn't a conference committee, this is why. There are basically other options for working out differences between the House and Senate. Fourth, and I alluded to this before, it's important to understand the power of the House Rules Committee. So as I said, both the Senate and the House have committees on rules. For a reason I'm about to explain, the House Committee is extremely powerful and plays a key role in whether or not legislation can get put up for a vote in the House. So basically in the House, so a bill is introduced, it goes to a committee by the hearing and decides to report the bill out to the full chamber for consideration, that bill often can't just then proceed to the floor of the House for debate and then a vote. There are a number of ways that legislation can get to the floor of the House and Senate for consideration. So different ways that they can get a ticket to the floor to then be debated and voted upon. For controversial legislation, to get to the floor of the House, the legislation first has to go to the House Rules Committee, which then will pass what's known as a special rule. So a special rule is actually a resolution that says that the legislation can get put on the House calendar for discussion, and it regulates how that bill will be considered. So the special rule will establish things like how long the bill can be debated, whether any rules will be waived in the consideration of the bill, and most significantly what amendments can be offered, right? So the rule from the Rules Committee will say what amendments people can propose to make to the bill, right? So they play this huge gatekeeping function for legislation to make it from the committee stage to the floor of the House for consideration. Now, this isn't all legislation. There are lots of basically different ways the bill can make it to the floor, but for anything major or controversial, it's going to have to go through the House Rules Committee and basically get a rule that it can be debated upon. And last but not least, since it's been coming up in the news a lot recently in the presidential election, I want to talk about what's commonly referred to as the nuclear option. The nuclear option sounds very dramatic. It is talked about in a very dramatic way, but the important thing to know about it is that it is essentially just a means to amend the Senate rules. Like I said, I want to talk about it today because I think a number of Republican and presidential candidates this year, they've been asked whether they would employ or they would support the employment of the nuclear option in order to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And so this is basically what we're talking about when we talk about the nuclear option, right? So as we've talked about all today, the rules of procedure cover a lot of things related to debate and voting. And in the Senate, under the Senate rules, you know, a senator can basically speak as long as they want during debate, essentially preventing a vote from occurring by what we know as filibustering. And under the Senate rules to stop debate and stop the filibuster, you need 60 senators or three-fifths of the Senate to vote to do so. So, and that is in the Senate rules. Now the Senate could amend their own rules to say that less than 60 senators are needed to stop a filibuster in a given instance. But like we talked about earlier today, actually amending the Senate rules is hard to do. To stop debate on a resolution to amend the Senate rules and proceed to a vote, you need even more than 60. You need a two-thirds majority to do that, right? And that is hard to overcome a filibuster in past legislation. It's even harder to overcome a filibuster to amend the rules. But again, remember that there are other sources that govern rules of procedure in the Senate and that the rules are not self-enforcing, right? So because of that, that the rules aren't self-enforcing, the Senate can essentially amend its rules by simply establishing a new precedent, right? So the precedent I talked about. So basically what the nuclear option is is amending the Senate's rules of procedure through the use of precedent, right? So basically this has come up in recent years in terms of dealing with Senate, the Senate approval of the President's appointees to judicial posts as well as other executive branch posts. A few years ago, none of President Obama's appointees could get through the Senate because they were going to be filibustered or there was a threat of a filibuster. So basically couldn't get any of his nominees approved and appointed by the Senate. So what the Senate did, and this is now the nuclear option works, basically the presiding officer in the Senate will make a procedural ruling saying that it does not violate the rules of the Senate to end debate, right? And stop a filibuster by a simple majority vote. So instead of needing 60 senators, we only need a simple majority, right? So this ruling will be made by the majority party. A member of the minority party will of course appeal this ruling and ask for a vote. But then of course the entire chamber made up of the majority party will vote to uphold the procedural ruling, thereby establishing a precedent and changing the rules that for presidential appointees, and when this happened, it was for appointees other than the Supreme Court, you only need a majority to stop a filibuster and vote on the appointee. So that's all it is. So like I said, it's got a very dramatic name. There's actually a funny little bit on the daily show that I've linked to here where John Oliver points out kind of how funny it is that it has such a dramatic name even though it's just a procedural change. But you know, it is a big deal, right? The Senate is all about respecting the minority party. The Senate is all about collegiality. And so employing this nuclear option to right overcome the wishes of the minority and the established filibuster procedure is kind of a big deal. So those are the five facts that I think are interesting and would be important to know about this topic. And that's all I've prepared for today. We have it looks like about 10 minutes left. So I'll just open it up to questions now. Or if anyone else has anything to share about this topic. All right. Join me in thanking Morgan. That was fantastic. Very interesting.