Roland Burris Should Be Seated In U.S. Senate

By All Legal Accounts The Embattled Gov. Of Illinois Got This Right

Jan 14, 2009 Paul Hamilton

Roland Burris the person embattled Govenor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich (D) picked to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat is highly competent and qualified for the position.

The constitutional qualifications to become a U.S. Senator are pretty unambiguous, in fact, they read rather like the ingredients section of a recipe. In order to make a U.S. Senator, according to Article 1 section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, the individual must be 30 years of age, have been a citizen of the U.S. for nine years, and must reside in the state he or she represents at the time of election, that is pretty much it. In the case of the would-be junior U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois, a little bit of extra hot sauce was placed in the mix, because he was appointed by a governor who is under a bit of a political cloud, in that among other corruption charges, he has been accused by federal prosecutors of trying to sell the very seat he appointed to Mr. Burris. And because of the overwhelming indication of scandal the Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White has up to now refused to sign the certificate that would authenticate Mr. Burris's selection as the new U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Refusal To Seat Burris Has No Legal Leg To Stand On

Article 1 Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution does give the U.S. Senate the authority to be the sole judge of a potential U.S. Senators qualifications, but that may just be in regard to the Article 1, Section 3 part of the constitution. And because recent precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), does not favor the ability of any representative body of congress to deny a seat to any duly elected member. And given that the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution holds that the legislature of any state may empower it's chief executive to make necessary Senate appointments until the people fill the vacancy by election, Mr. Burris just might be holding the best hand.

Political Maneuvering On Both Sides Of The Democratic Aisle

Democrats in the U.S. Senate and the Illinois legislature may have made this more of a political spectacle than was really necessary. As it turns out, Mr. Burris is a fine choice and has an impressive resume as well as knowing how to play politics under the crush of the media spotlight. He went to the U.S. Senate in a effort to draw further attention to his cause and may have just won over enough important potential political support, in Illinois, in the U.S. Senate and around the nation with the image of a 71 year-old African-American being turned away from an important American legislative body that currently has no African-American representation, during a time when the first African-American President has just been elected and is about to take the oath of office, brilliant! On the other side, U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-N) had been politicking behind the scenes for a so-called proper successor to President-Elect Barack Obama, and may have gotten his hand stuck in the proverbial race card cookie jar. As it turned out according to currently impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office, Reid was only interested in white candidates to fill the vacant Illinois seat. Oh what a tangled web...

Doing The Right Thing

At the end of the day, the right and legal thing for Senate Democrats to do may just be to seat Burris. Just last week he went before the Illinois House panel investigating the Illinois governor and he told them there was no pay for play involving his appointment to the seat. In fact in the twenty plus years Mr. Burris has served in a public capacity for the state of Illinois there has never been a hint of scandal. Also, as the Democrats seek to approve multi-billion dollar stimulus packages and put 4.1 million Americans to work, that currently vacant U.S. Senate seat may loom large, perhaps it is better to have it filled with a team playing Democrat? Also, it may be that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) got it right when as the chairperson of the Senate Rules Committee, she came out in favor of of her committee taking up the matter of Burris's appointment immediately, and mentioning that the governor of Illinois had both the power to appoint and that the appointment was legal. And all the while the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling last week said that Secretary of State Jessie White's signature was not required to be on the certificate to authorize the Mr. Burris's paperwork, and therefore could no longer be used as an excuse not to seat him. So in light of recent developments, perhaps the U.S. Senate might just want to do the right thing, and that seems to be to seat Mr. Burris as the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois.

The copyright of the article Roland Burris Should Be Seated In U.S. Senate in American Affairs is owned by Paul Hamilton. Permission to republish Roland Burris Should Be Seated In U.S. Senate in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.