While a staple of the modern American legislature, the committee system’s modern form was in no way guaranteed by the founding. The development of standing and select committees, as well as joint committees and conference committees has been the result of a long historical process. The needs of legislators have shaped the functions of committees over time, and the ad hoc drafting committees of the late 1700s have been supplanted by a complex system of legislative investigatory bodies with long histories, expansive powers, and complex rules.
Types of Committees, Their Functions, and Their Histories
Select Committees
During the early history of Congress, the only committees created were select committees, committees created for a temporary and specific purpose, generally for the drafting of a bill. Congress, in full session, would debate an issue and, when it came to a conclusion, would designate a select committee to draft the bill.1 These committees would then disband when their task was complete, without accumulating prestige or influence, operating as a tool of the legislature as a whole. Over time, standing committees would become the main vehicle of legislation, but select committees and subcommittees would continue to have relevance. Before comprehensive committee jurisdictions established themselves, select committees remained in practice to cover areas of the legislature without a standing committee over them. The investigative powers of select committees go back all the way to the 1790s, and Congress continued to designate committees for the purpose of investigation well into the 20^th^ century, especially during the Roosevelt Administration and World War II, though this power was shifted to standing committees by Legislative Reorganization Act.2 In the modern era, select committees are still used to cover issues with particular temporal relevance with some recent examples including the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and Select Committee on the CCP.3
Standing Committees
Standing committees have jurisdiction over specific policy areas and are the dominant force in the committee structure today; this was not always the case. Standing committees were slow to develop, but by the early 1820s, a number of standing committees, with specific jurisdictions, had been established and bill referrals to select committees where standing committees would otherwise have jurisdiction had been curtailed.4 Committees also gained the ability to propose legislation, a shift away from Jeffersonian principles, and the floor amendment process was given strict germaneness rules; these movements were driven by a desire to present counter-expertise to rival executive departments and to handle a more significant workload.5
Following the 1820s, the standing committee system continued to develop, with subcommittees emerging and the number of standing committees increasing steadily through 1918, at which time the House would have almost sixty and the Senate would have seventy-four.6 Not all committees were equal in this period, and many did not engage vigorously in legislative practice. In the Senate, many “were primarily used to justify granting office space, a clerk, and printing allowance to their chairmen.”7 One important change during this period was the distribution of the power of appropriations across committees, in the House at first and then the Senate a couple of decades later in 1899.8 This period was also marked by interweaving between the parties and committees increasing significantly and chairmanships becoming both partisan and sought after rewards for party membership (and loyalty for Republicans; Democrats were less inclined to reward party loyalty in such a way).9 Finally, the House Rules Committee with its ability to pass special/temporary rules became a driving power in the House, able to pick and choose which measures would pass without hindrance, and which could be subject to delay and easy obfuscation.10
That era ended with the 1910 Cannon revolt which saw a bipartisan coalition unite to unseat Speaker Cannon from the chair, move the power to choose the Rules Committee to the full House, and remove the ability for the Speaker to determine chairmanships of all committees. This would lead to an era of consolidation of committee power apart from party influence.11 To replace chairmanship choices by the Speaker, the seniority system was implemented.12 The 1920s also saw a consolidation of committee power with the dissolution of many Senate committees and reconsolidation of appropriation powers, a move strengthened by yet further consolidation by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 which further condensed the number of committees and gave the first defined set of committee jurisdictions.13
In the 1970s, this system again shifted, with the seniority system coming to a close for both parties in subsequent years.14 “The Speaker regained control of the Rules Committee in 1975” and “was also granted the power to refer bills to multiple committees in 1974,” both powerful tools for agenda control.15 Finally, the rise of the omnibus spending reduced the power of appropriating committees compared to parties, leaving the present an era of relatively weak committees compared to recent history.16
Joint Committees
Joint committees have members of both the House and Senate serve on them (with the chairmanship rotating between houses) and “have been used since the First Congress for study, investigation, oversight, and routine activities.”17 Over the years many dozens of these committees have been created, but there are only four presently active.1819
Conference Committees
Conference committees are a tool used by legislators to reconcile differences in bills passed by the Senate and the House. “They are typically composed of members from the pertinent committee(s) of each house.20 The use of such committees has dramatically decreased in recent years in favor of trading amendments between the two houses, going from fifty-three conference reports in the 104th Congress to just one in the 118th Congress.21
Committee Oversight
While in use from the beginning of congressional history, committee investigations and oversight actions were minor in scope and quantity for much of American history, with some exceptions such as the unveiling of the Teapot Dome scandal, Pujo hearings, and investigations into Wall Street after the beginning of the Great Depression; it would not be until the 1930s that oversight’s political power in conflicts between the executive and legislature would begin to be realized.22 With the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act, standing committees became the new locus of oversight and were granted subpoena power to better understand the agencies under their control; resources flowed into these committees for increasing numbers of investigations, and as time went on, the targets of those investigations broadened to include not just governmental actors but also certain private actors as well like “alleged communists, labor racketeers, and Wall Street financiers.”23 As parties reasserted control over the committee system, these investigations have become increasingly partisan.
Bibliography
Davidson, Roger, Walter Oleszek, Frances Lee, Eric Shickler, and James Curry. Congress and Its Members. 20th ed. CQ Press, 2025.
National Archives. “Records of Joint Committees of the U.S. Congress.” August 15, 2016. https://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/browse/joint-committees.html.
Schickler, Eric. “The Development of the Congressional Committee System.” In The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress, 1. publ. in paperback, edited by Frances Lee. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013.
“Select Committee on the CCP |.” Accessed April 11, 2026. http://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/.
“Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government | House Judiciary Committee Republicans.” September 25, 2024. http://judiciary.house.gov/subcommittees/committee-judiciary-118th-congress/select-subcommittee-weaponization-federal.
Footnotes
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Eric Schickler, “The Development of the Congressional Committee System,” in The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress, 1. publ. in paperback, ed. Frances Lee, The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 714. ↩
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Ibid., 730. ↩
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“Select Committee on the CCP |,” accessed April 11, 2026, http://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/; “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government | House Judiciary Committee Republicans,” September 25, 2024, http://judiciary.house.gov/subcommittees/committee-judiciary-118th-congress/select-subcommittee-weaponization-federal. ↩
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Schickler, “The Development of the Congressional Committee System,” 714. ↩
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Ibid., 714—15. ↩
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Ibid., 718. ↩
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Ibid., 719. ↩
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Ibid., 720—21. ↩
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Ibid., 722. ↩
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Ibid., 723—24. ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Ibid., 728—29. ↩
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Ibid., 725—27. ↩
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Ibid., 733. ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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Ibid., 734. ↩
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Roger Davidson et al., Congress and Its Members, 20th ed. (CQ Press, 2025), 186. ↩
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Ibid. ↩
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“Records of Joint Committees of the U.S. Congress,” National Archives, August 15, 2016, https://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/browse/joint-committees.html. ↩
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Davidson et al., Congress and Its Members, 186. ↩
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Ibid., 245. ↩
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Schickler, “The Development of the Congressional Committee System,” 730. ↩
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Ibid., 751. ↩