Legal News

For Alan Frumin, It?s All Parliamentary

By Ashby Jones

We’ve talked before about our professed love for Slate’s “Explainer” column — for us, it’s just one of those columns that hardly ever hits a wrong note.

Today’s column was an eye-opener. Asks Slate’s Brian Palmer: How does one become the Senate’s parliamentarian?

If you’re sitting there scratching your head over this, we suggest first checking in with this interesting piece from last weekend’s NYT piece on the current Senate parliamentarian, Alan S. Frumin. Frumin’s sort of like the Senate referee, and, as such, might be in the position of making some critical decisions regarding the procedures surrounding the health-care bill. As described in the NYT piece:

His rulings on arcane procedural questions may determine whether President Obama winds up signing a health care overhaul or whether the administration's signature policy initiative collapses.

As parliamentarian, Frumin’s expected to be scrupulously non-partisan, an attribute some Senate Republicans questioned in regard to Frumin.

That, according to the NYT story, doesn’t sit well with Frumin. Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle told the Times said Frumin was "extremely sensitive to any charge of favoritism," and that might be why Republicans were prodding.

In any event, how to become Frumin? As you might imagine, it’s not easy. Since 1935, only five men have held the job, reports Slate’s Brian Palmer. Palmer says that, to date, “every parliamentarian has been replaced by his first lieutenant, because no outside hire could possess the knowledge of Senate minutiae that the job requires.”

And how do you become a first lieutenant to the Senate parliamentarian? Well, doesn’t hurt to know someone who knows the sitting parliamentarians. Palmer writes that they typically fill open assistant jobs by “asking respected friends, colleagues, and teachers for recommendations.”

Strangely, you don’t have to have gone to parliamentarian school. Or have a law degree. Or have helped write the updated version of Roberts Rules of Order. Nope. Writes Palmer:

The good news is that there are no formal requirements, and you don’t need to know anything about the Senate or its members on your first day. Bob Dove, who held the Senate job for a total of 12 years, had no familiarity whatsoever with the body’s rules and precedents before starting as an assistant. When a position opened up in 1966, sitting Parliamentarian Floyd Riddick asked Duke political science professor Robert Rankin to recommend his best student. The endorsement of Rankin, who mentored both men, and an interview with Riddick landed Dove the job.

Oh, and the salary? A not too shabby $167k.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 18, 2010 (boomark / email).