Robert Menendez (official photo)

The effort by a committee of the Sussex Tea Party to recall Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) from office has called attention nationwide to the idea of mid-term recalls of United States Senators, as a column appearing in yesterday's Washington Examiner illustrates. That column highlights the American Civil Rights Union's RecallCongressNow project, which directly quotes the recall-enabling provision of the New Jersey Constitution.

Mark Tapscott, writing in The Washington Examiner, yesterday called the existence of such recall provisions a "terrifying fact for career politicos." Again quoting RecallCongressNow, he named the nine States that provide for such recall: Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. According to the ACRU site, twelve incumbent Senators from these States currently do not face re-election, presumably because three of them, including New Jersey, do not currently have a Senator in Class III, the class that faces re-election in 2010.

Article I Section 2b of the New Jersey Constitution reads as follows:

The people reserve unto themselves the power to recall, after at least one year of service, any elected official in this State or representing this State in the United States Congress. The Legislature shall enact laws to provide for such recall elections.

RecallCongressNow is a specific resource making available information on which states allow the recall of their congressional delegations, and how to accomplish such a recall. The site emphasizes the recall of Senators because most of the States involved (including New Jersey) make an elected official subject to recall after he has served for one year. Given that Representatives face the voters every two years in all States, a recall campaign would be unnecessarily time-consuming for all involved--though whether "a year of service" necessarily means "a year in the official's current term of office" or could instead mean "after the first year of continuous service in the office that the official is to be recalled from" is an open question. But because Senators serve for six years, and because one-third of the States in any given federal election do not have a Senator facing re-election (unless a vacancy exists or was filled by a temporary appointee), recall of Senators becomes potentially more desirable.

No State has ever recalled any member of its delegation to either House of Congress. But John Armor, a Constitutional lawyer with 33 years' experience, wrote in Townhall.com on February 2 that the right of recall traces back to 1691 (in the Massachusetts charter), and that several States reserved the right of recall, even of Senators, after 1789. Armor says that recalling a Senator is constitutional for two reasons: that the Constitution deliberately makes election law a State matter, and Amendment X reserves to the States and the people any powers that the Constitution does not specifically vest in the federal government or forbid the States to exercise.

RecallCongressNow is not the only relevant resource. A sketchy primer on recalling a Senator appears at eHow.com. Ironically, a forum at DemocraticUnderground.com cited that very post on November 3, 2007.

This article is part of the Robert Menendez series.

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UPDATE: Listen to a discussion of the recall effort on WorldNetDaily Audio.