The Dean of the United States House of Representatives is the longest continuously serving member of the House. The present Dean is John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan.
The Dean is a symbolic post whose only customary duty is to swear in a Speaker of the House when he or she is elected. The Dean comes forward on the House Floor to administer the oath to the Speaker-elect before the new Speaker then administers the oath to the other members. The Dean does not preside over the election of the Speaker, unlike the Father of the House in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom and the Dean of the Canadian House of Commons.
Because of other privileges associated with seniority, the Dean is usually allotted some of the most desirable office space, and is generally either chair or ranking minority member of an influential committee.
It is unclear when the position first achieved concrete recognition, though the seniority system and increasing lengths of service emerged in the early 20th century. As late as 1924, Frederick H. Gillett was Dean, and also Speaker, before becoming a Senator. Modern Deans move into their positions so late in their careers that a move to the Senate is highly unlikely.
The Deanship can change hands unexpectedly. In the 1952 election, Adolph J. Sabath became the first Representative elected to a 24th term, breaking the record of 23 terms first set by former Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon, whose service had been discontinuous, whereas Sabath's was not. North Carolina's Robert L. Doughton had not contested that election as he was retiring at the age of 89 years and two months, a House age record broken in 1998 by Sidney R. Yates, and again by current representative Ralph Hall in 2012. Claude Pepper, who died early in his final term in 1989, held the record for oldest winner of a House election until Hall broke it in 2012. However, Sabath died before the new term began and Doughton was Dean for the old term's final months before Speaker Sam Rayburn became Dean in the new Congress.
In 1994, Texas Democrat Jack Brooks was defeated for reelection in the year he was expected to succeed Jamie L. Whitten as Dean.
The second longest-serving current member of the house is John Conyers, coincidentally also a Democrat from Michigan, who was first elected in 1964.
Read more about Dean Of The United States House Of Representatives: List of Deans of The House
Famous quotes containing the words dean, united, states and/or house:
“Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.”
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920)
“We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“But the house of the prudent countryman will be, of course, a place of honest manners; and Demeter Thesmophoros is the guardian of married life, the deity of the discretion of wives. She is therefore the founder of civilised order.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)