West Virginia Code § 4-1A-1

(a) The purpose of this article is to describe the scope and limitations of legislative immunity
provided by:
(1) English common law;
(2) The Speech or Debate Clause of the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 6;
(3) Decisions regarding legislative immunity as developed in federal common law by the
federal judiciary in interpreting the Speech or Debate Clause of the United States
Constitution, Article I, Section 6;
(5) The Speech or Debate Clause of the West Virginia Constitution, Article VI, Section 17;
(6) The Separation of Powers Doctrine and the system of checks and balances embodied in
the United States Constitution; and
(7) The Division of Powers set forth in the West Virginia Constitution, Article V, Section 1.
(b) The Legislature finds and declares as follows:
(1) That the privilege of Speech or Debate has been recognized as an important protection of
the independence and integritey of the Legislature.
(2) That the ancestry of this privilege traces back to a clause in the English Bill of Rights of
1689 and the history traces even further back, almost to the beginning of the development of
the English Parliament as an independent force.
(3) That in the American governmental structure, privileges arising under the Speech or
Debate Clause reinforce the Separation of Powers Doctrine and the system of checks and
balaWnces that was so deliberately established by the founding fathers and was carried over
into the West Virginia Constitution.
(4) That the protections provided by the Speech or Debate Clause and the Separation of
Powers Doctrine were not written into the national and state Constitutions simply for the
personal or private benefit of members of Congress, the State Legislatures and local
governing bodies, but were intended to protect the integrity of the legislative process by
insuring the independence of individual legislators.

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