Twentieth Amendment, Section 2:

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section 2 of the Twentieth Amendment superseded Clause 2 of Section 4 of Article I.1 Setting an exact hour for Congress to meet recognized Congress’s long practice, which it enacted into permanent law for the first time in 18672 but repealed in 1871.3 When January 3 fell on Sunday (in 1937), Congress appointed a different day by law to assemble.4

Footnotes

1

See ArtI.S4.C2.1 When Congress Shall Assemble.

2

Ch. 10, 14 Stat. 378.

3

Ch. 21, § 30, 17 Stat. 12. See 1 Asher C. Hind, Precedents of the House of Representatives § 11 (1907).

4

Ch. 713, 49 Stat. 1826.