Recall, Case Study of the United States Legal System

In many legal systems based on direct or semi-direct democracy, some means of popular supervisory mechanisms, including popular initiative, referendum, and recall, are envisaged. Recall is one of the modern popular supervisory methods that, while identifying the representative body, tries to remove the incumbent before the end of his/her term of office. This practice is still unknown and not used in the constitutions of many countries, but considered highly beneficial in a democratic environment. The main question of the present study is the essence of this legal entity by studying it in the legal systems of several states and federal level of the US. For this purpose, in this article, after recognizing the background and classification of recall with regard to the types of monitoring, the mandatory conditions and typology of this process will be discussed. The typology of recall includes its sorts in terms of justified reasons or grounds, signature collection threshold to start the election, and the how of the filling the position of the ousted official or the recall election methods. In some cases, the legislature, taking into account the circumstances, by anticipating the grounds excludes this process from an exclusively political process, which requires the provision of reasons. As a categorizer, one of the distinguishing features of recall is that, unlike other constitutional supervisory tools such as expulsion and impeachment, it is exercised outside of the ruling forces and by citizens. This article tries to introduce the recall, its background and types, evaluation of the recall, a plan to modify the problems raised by the opposition, and finally the possibility of the recall at the federal level of the US legal system.