1995) (citing Baker's six factors in analyzing existence of political question). Plaintiffs Article VI claim raises a political question because it implicates two of the factors listed in Baker: (1) the claim involves a matter textually committed by the Constitution to the Senate and House, and (2) resolution of the claim would require the Court's interference in a matter that would express a lack of respect due a coordinate branch.
The selection of Senate and House officers is textually committed by the Constitution to each House of Congress. U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl. 5 ("The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers . . .") and § 3, cl. 5 ("The Senate shall chuse their . . . Officers..."). That commitment is of the same quality as the textual commitment of the power to try impeachments, which the Supreme Court found to constitute a nonjusticiable political question in Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993). In Nixon, the Court held that the issue of how the Senate tried impeachments, outside of the explicit conditions set forth in the impeachment clause itself, was textually committed to the Senate by the Constitution and thus raised a political question not justiciable before Article in courts. Id. at 228-30. Like the power to try impeachments, the power of each House to choose its own officers provides for plenary authority necessary to the legitimate and independent function of those bodies. Indeed, whereas the President and the Senate have a joint role in the selection of the principal officers provided for under the Constitution for the other branches (e.g., ambassadors, public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and other officers established by law), the Constitution commits
"(...continued)
of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on
one question.
Baker, 369 V.S. at 217.
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