Clerk of the United States House of
Representatives
The Clerk of the United States House of
Representatives is an officer of the United
States House of Representatives, whose
primary duty is to act as the chief record-
keeper for the House.
Along with the other House officers, the
Clerk is elected every two years when the
House organizes for a new Congress. The
majority and minority caucuses nominate
candidates for the House officer positions
after the election of the Speaker. The full
House adopts a resolution to elect the of-
ficers, who will begin serving after they have
taken the oath of office.
The current clerk is Lorraine Miller, of
Texas. She replaced Karen L. Haas in Febru-
ary 2007. She retained Deputy Clerks Marjor-
ie C. Kelaher and Jorge E. Sorensen. Kelaher
retired on May 1, 2007 and was replaced by
Deborah Spriggs, an aide to Speaker of the
House Nancy Pelosi.
Duties
Every two years regular congressional elec-
tions are held. Only one-third of Senators’
terms expire at each of these elections, but
the terms of office of the entire House end.
The Senate has remained in constant exist-
ence since it first went into session in 1789
but the House goes out of existence (and
hence a "new" Congress takes office) every
two years. To preserve the legal continuity of
the House, the existence of the House is ves-
ted in the Clerk at the end of each two-year
term. Thus, when the newly-elected members
of the House gather on January 3, it is the
Clerk who summons Representatives and
convenes the new Congress for the first time.
Accordingly, the Clerk gavels the House into
session, chairs the body as it adopts its rules
of order, and oversees the election of a
Speaker under those rules. The Speaker then
takes the chair and the House proceeds with
its business (which includes electing a Clerk
for the new session). Were the House not to
vest such personality in the Clerk, there
would be no legally empowered authority to
convene the session and lead the House in its
first few acts.
As stated in Rule II of the House