Talk:Dean of the United States House of Representatives

First sworn in

As I understand it, being sworn in is purely ceremonial and does not bestow any official status. One becomes a Member of the House of Representatives when the member's term begins. For example, at midnight on March 4 (pre XXth Amendment) or noon on January 3 (post-XXth Amendment).—Markles 13:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that being sworn in does not in itself confer seniority in the US House, unlike in the UK House of Commons, where which of the Members with equal length of service is the Father of the House is determined by the order in which they were first sworn in. I used this criteria to come up with just one name for the first period of the existence of the US House, to produce a manageable entry for the list. The alternative is to include every member elected to the 1st Congress (except for those from NC and RI which did not ratify the constitution until after the term began, so I would say they could not be deemed to have seniority from March 4, 1789) and then reduce the numbers as the 1st Congress members dropped out or had their service broken.

The alternative, all inclusive, list of Deans with seniority from March 4, 1789 is as follows (only naming individual Deans when we get down to four in the 5th Congress).

• March 1789-June 1790 58 members (11 states) (March 4, 1789)
• June 1790-March 1791 57 members (11 states) (March 4, 1789)
• March 1791-June 1791 34 members (11 states) (March 4, 1789)
• June 1791-May 1792 33 members (11 states) (March 4, 1789)
• May 1792-June 1792 32 members (10 states) (March 4, 1789)
• June 1792-March 1793 31 members (10 states) (March 4, 1789)
• March 1793-March 1795 21 members (8 states) (March 4, 1789)
• March 1795-June 1796 13 members (5 states) (March 4, 1789)
• June 1796-July 1796 11 members (5 states) (March 4, 1789)
• July 1796-March 1797 10 members (5 states) (March 4, 1789)
• March 1797-July 1797 Thomas Hartley (F-PA); Josiah Parker (F-VA); William L. Smith (F-SC) and George Thatcher (F-MA) (March 4, 1789)
• July 1797-December 1800 Thomas Hartley (F-PA); Josiah Parker (F-VA) and George Thatcher (F-MA) (March 4, 1789)
• December 1800-March 1801 Josiah Parker (F-VA) and George Thatcher (F-MA) (March 4, 1789)
• 4 March-5 March 1801 George Thatcher (F-MA) (March 4, 1789)
• Thereafter as in the table in the article. --Gary J 23:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

A great deal is made of the differences in the role of the Dean of the House of Representatives and the Father of the British House of Commons, Indeed, it's discussed not once, but twice in this article. Who cares what the British do in their legislature? There certainly isn't any discussion in the corresponding British Wiki article about the differences with the U.S. House's dean. Perhaps these non sequitur comments should be deleted - at least this article hasn't been converted to British English, so that's something. Jmdeur (talk) 17:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Speakers

If the list of Speakers associated with each Dean is only supposed to reflect those who were sworn in by that Dean, the tradition can only be traced back as far as 1849. It's unclear whether it happened before that. So either the list should include all Speakers associated with all Deans, or nothing before 1849. JTRH (talk) 02:18, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

What happened when the Speaker WAS the Dean,as happened most recently with Rayburn in 1961?(Years ago I had a reference to the tradition only being continuous since then but someone deleted it).Incidentally I recently learned that though Doughton became the oldest-ever Dean,he was NOT,as early Guinness Book editions claim,the oldest serving member of Congress up to that time...neither he nor Yates held that record,Hall took it away from Charles Manly Stedman (as well as the oldest-House-election-winner record from Pepper).12.144.5.2 (talk) 02:27, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Now that is an excellent question. JTRH (talk) 03:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Just looked it up. In 1961, Rayburn was sworn in by Carl Vinson, who was the second-most-senior member. JTRH (talk) 22:46, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Note almost tie

Hello. This piece says:

Rogers and Smith were both elected 1980, but because seniority for Members of Congress sworn in on the same day is done in alphabetical order, Rogers is considered more senior than Smith.

Which supports Ringwiss' edits removing Rep. Chris Smith from the list, but I wonder if we should add a note explaining this or if it's too trivial to include. I'm also not totally sure the New Jersey Globe is a reliable source. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Ahh, https://clerk.house.gov/member_info/Terms_of_Service.pdf is a decent cite, linked from Seniority in the United States House of Representatives. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:07, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

portrait is rotated?

I'm not sure if it's just me but it seems that the portrait is rotated. I can't fix it right now, so if anyone comes by would help, it would mean a lot. ~ LunaticNeko ~ (talk) 02:27, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

It looks like that to me too. I think it happened at 08:30, 8 January 2023 when the image was modified by SteinsplitterBot, a bot operated by User:Steinsplitter, saying "Bot: Image rotated by 90° (EXIF-Orientation set from 8 to 1, rotated 0°)". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:49, 3 October 2023 (UTC)