Samuel Randall And The Recognition Power

In 1876, the House elected Samuel J. Randall as Speaker. He began to consolidate the power of the Speaker, primarily through the use of his power to recognize members.

The House of Representatives is quite large. Obviously, not everyone can take the floor to speak at one time. In order to bring some structure to the process, one of the main powers of the Speaker has been his ability to recognize members. Essentially, members of the House cannot take the floor unless the Speaker recognizes them. The recognition power is important because, theoretically, it can permit the Speaker to block both challenges to legislation he prefers and challenges to his authority. For example, if a member of Congress wants to offer an amendment that the Speaker does not support, the Speaker can merely refuse to recognize the member offering the amendment.

For the most part, early Speakers used this power in a neutral way, exercising it only to facilitate debate and not to reward or punish certain members. Samuel Randall was the first Speaker to use the recognition power to systematically discriminate against the minority party (and even against members of his own party that he did not like). In 1881, Randall declared, "There is no power in the House itself to appeal from the recognition of the chair. The right of recognition is just as absolute in the chair as the judgment of the Supreme Court is absolute in the interpretation of the law."