The speech or debate clause of the US Constitution provides Members of Congress (and their staff) with civil and criminal immunity for “legislative acts” that they perform in the course of their duties, shielding them from harassment or intimidation.
The clause is “a key pillar in the American separation of powers” that serves to “protect the independence, integrity, and effectiveness of the legislative branch by barring executive or judicial intrusions into the protected sphere of the legislative process,” as described in a new overview from the Congressional Research Service.
If Members of Congress do not value their deliberative role and do not wish to function as independent actors, the speech and debate clause cannot make them. But it is there to protect them if they do. See Understanding the Speech or Debate Clause, December 1, 2017.
Other new reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following:
Winter Fuels Outlook 2017-2018, December 5, 2017
Bank Systemic Risk Regulation: The $50 Billion Threshold in the Dodd-Frank Act, December 6, 2017
Defining Broadband: Minimum Threshold Speeds and Broadband Policy, December 4, 2017
The Application of the “One Central Reason” Standard in Asylum and Withholding of Removal Cases, CRS Legal Sidebar, December 18, 2017
What Happens if H.R. 1 Conflicts with U.S. Tax Treaties?, CRS Legal Sidebar, December 19, 2017
The War in Yemen: A Compilation of Legislation in the 115th Congress, December 20, 2017
As the United States continues nuclear modernization on all legs of its nuclear triad through the creation of new variants of warheads, missiles, and delivery platforms, examining the effects of nuclear weapons production on the public is ever more pressing.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.
Recognizing the power of the national transportation infrastructure expert community and its distributed expertise, ARPA-I took a different route that would instead bring the full collective brainpower to bear around appropriately ambitious ideas.