Article I — Section 4

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no fixed obligation to meet on any particular schedule, and the results were frequently chaotic. Quorums were difficult to assemble, legislative business stalled for months, and on several occasions the national government was effectively paralyzed because too few delegates bothered to attend. This dysfunction was fresh in the minds of every delegate who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787. The framers understood that a republican government dependent on elected representatives could not function if those representatives were free to simply stay home indefinitely, leaving the nation without a functioning legislature.