House of Representatives in the United States

House of Representatives in the Legislative Process

The lower house of the legislature of the United States Congress and part of the United States Congress, the House of Representatives is home to 435 congressmen, serving all 50 states in proportion to their populations. (Populous California is thus represented by 53 congressmen and congresswomen, while sparsely populated Wyoming is represented by one.) Members of the House face election every two years.

Legal Materials

The House of Representatives Web site (www.house.gov) posts extensive information about the House and a link to Thomas, which posts bills, Public Laws and other Federal legislative materials. More House-related materials is posted by the Office of the Clerk, including historical information and lists of current House members & committees (e.g., lists of members by state), plus links to members’ Web pages.

You can look up a Representative’s name by zip code on the House home page. You also get a form that lets you send the Representative an e-mail and, if available, a link to the Representative’s Web page.

For questions about House activities, call the main number at 202-224-3121. For procedural quetions, see “Rules of Procedure,” below. For questions on materials published by the House of Representative, call the Legislative Resource Center (formerly the House Document Room) at 202-226-5200.

Rules of Conduct: House ethics rules are posted on the website for the House Committee on Ethics (202-225-7103).

Rules of Procedure: The GPO posts the House Rules and Manual, containing “the fundamental source material for parliamentary procedure used in the House of Representatives.” The GPO also posts “Precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives” on the FDsys Additional Government Documents page; “Precedents” is comprised of Deschler’s Precedents of the United States House of Representatives(covering 1936 to the present) and two older publications that also interpret the House Rules, Cannon’s Precedents and Hinds’ Precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives (covering 1789 through 1936). See also House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House. For questions, contact theCommittee on Rules (202-225-9091) and of the House Parliamentarian’s office (202-225-7373). See also the Rules Committee’s Rules and Manuals page.

For more about House Rules, see Points of Order: Congressional Rules Governing the Legislative Process by John Cannan, 53(2) Law Library Lights 11 (Winter 2010). Two great tips from John Cannan:

Chairman’s marks are often posted on the relevant committee’s website; and
Each party’s rules for obtaining committee assignments are generally not available to the public (or even members of the other party).

House of Representatives in Constitutional Law

A list of entries related to House of Representatives may be found, under the House of Representatives category, in the United States constitutional law platform of this legal Encyclopedia.

Finding the law: House of Representatives in the U.S. Code

A collection of general and permanent laws relating to house of representatives, passed by the United States Congress, are organized by subject matter arrangements in the United States Code (U.S.C.; this label examines house of representatives topics), to make them easy to use (usually, organized by legal areas into Titles, Chapters and Sections). The platform provides introductory material to the U.S. Code, and cross references to case law. View the U.S. Code’s table of contents here.