Proving the Rule

In 1949 the tradition of Senate seniority brought James O. Eastland to the chairmanship of the civil rights committee. Two weeks ago, Senator Eastland fell heir to the chairman's seat of the powerful Judiciary Committee. In view of some of the Senator's remarks (e.g. "the Negro race is an inferior race;"... the Supreme Court has been indoctrinated and brainwashed by left-wing pressure groups."), it does not seem possible that Eastland is suited for the job. In fact, his actions and utterances indicate that he will not even attempt to fulfill his important duties as head of the committee.

The seniority tradition brought Eastland to the fore, and although that tacit rule is airtight in the great majority of cases, it has nevertheless been broken three times in the past. "It is my judgement that the present vacancy in the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee justifies making another exception to the seniority custom of the Senate," said Wayne Morse two weeks ago. The Senate did not agree with him. A different body, in a different age, might have acted in another way.

In 1871, Charles Sumner '30 had served in the Senate for twenty years, ten of them spent on the Foreign Relations Committee. He had been in the Senate longer than any man of the day, and was respected for his great knowledge and experience in international affairs. Members of Congress generally agreed that there was not a better man for the Foreign Relations chairmanship. But many harsh and bitter words had passed between the senator from the Bay State and President Grant and his Secretary of State; Sumner was no longer on speaking terms with either of them. Many senators held that the Senator's personal relations with the Executive would make it impossible for him to execute properly the functions of the chairmanship. A majority of the Senate eventually took this position, and Sumner was shuttled off the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Bayard, in view of the action, fecetiously suggested that the title of the Committee on Foreign Relations be changed the "Committee on Personal Relations."

The second break with precedent came in the politically turgid days of December, 1923. Senator Albert B. Cummins had been the chairman of the Committee on Interstate Commerce since 1919. When, in 1923, his name again appeared on the list of proposed chairmen, Democrats and Progressives in the Senate roared that Cummins was the enemy of the farmer and the worker. He had sponsored the controversial Esch-Cummins law which provided for high railroad freight rates, a law that was oppressive to the small shipper. His opponents charged that Cummins was the ally of the gilded railroaders, and the farmer's foe. They maintained that Cummins' reappointment to the chair of the Interstate Commerce Commission would give him a stranglehold on the farmer. After better than thirty ballots, the adversaries succeeded in replacing Cummins with the progressive Republican Senator Smith.

Two years later, in March of 1925, the Senate had to decide whether Senator Ladd, senior member of the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys, should retain the chairmanship of that committee. Ladd, a Republican, had joined with "Fighting Bob" La Follette and two other Republican senators who had come out openly in favor of Progressive goals and means. The group had also opposed President Coolidge in the election of the year before. Summarily, the Republican Party had ordered that Ladd and the three other "mavericks" be no longer invited to future Republican conferences or to fill Republican vacancies on senatorial committees. The party wanted a "true" Republican as chairman, and so the Senate, over many protestations, appointed Senator Stanfield, Ladd's junior in experience and service, to the chair.

In the Ladd case, the exception to tradition resulted from an inner-party feud. In the Sumner and Cummins instances, however, the precedent was circumvented because the Senate considered the proposed senator unfit for the position he was to occupy.

Although seniority is an established and expedient way of appointing chairmen to Congressional committees, and while it works well in the majority of cases, the method is far from perfect. To preserve the custom as the best of feasible methods, Congress has shown in the past that it will, in unusual circumstances, make exceptions. When to make these exceptions, and how general they should be, then becomes a problem for which it is almost impossible to set criteria. But three exceptions, among the thousands of appointments, indicate that the Senate puts a higher premium on tradition than on criteria for exception.