by Paul Colts
Provision #15 of the Constitution from the Making of America
8:00 am in American History, british parliament, Congress, congressional districts, constitutional convention, founders, george mason, House of Representatives, inhabitant, instances, paragraph, parliament, requisites by Paul Colts
PROVISION 15 (From Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 2) A person cannot be elected to the House of Representatives unless he is an inhabitant of that State which he will be representing. This provision gives the people the right to not have any person sitting in Congress representing a State unless he is an inhabitant of that State. Taking the lesson from the British parliament, the founders did not want a person to represent a district without living there. At first, the Representatives were elected at large. It wasn’t until 1842 that Congress required the States to form Congressional districts so that each region of a State would be more adequately and fairly represented. George Mason had anticipated this necessity in the Constitutional Convention, saying …
[The House of Representatives] ought to know and sympathize with every part of the community; and ought therefore to be taken not only from different parts of the whole republic, but also from different districts of the larger members in it; which had in several instances … different interests and view arising from difference in produce, of habits, etc. We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people. … The requisites in actual representation are that the representatives should sympathize with their constituents; should think as they think, and feel as they feel; and that for these purposes should even be residents among them.
