The Legislative Branch

130 Pages·8.144 MB·English

by  Brian Duignan

CHECKS and BALANCES

TITLES IN THIS SERIES in the U.S. GOVERNMENT
T
h
e

L
e
g
i
s
l
a
t
The Executive Branch i
v
e

B
Carrying Out and Enforcing Laws
r
a The Legislative Branch
n
c
h
Making Laws
The Judicial Branch
M
a
k
i
n
Evaluating and Interpreting Laws g
L
aw Edited by Brian Duignan and Carolyn DeCarlo
s
The Legislative Branch
Making Laws
D
u
i
The U.S. Constitution g
n
a
n

and the Separation of Powers a
n
d

D
e
C
a
r
l
o
CHECKS and BALANCES
in the U.S. GOVERNMENT
The Legislative Branch
Making Laws
Edited by Brian Duignan and Carolyn DeCarlo
Published in 2019 by Britannica Educational Publishing (a trademark of Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc.) in association with The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © 2019 by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, and the
Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.
Rosen Publishing materials copyright © 2019 The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Distributed exclusively by Rosen Publishing.
To see additional Britannica Educational Publishing titles, go to rosenpublishing.com.
Britannica Educational Publishing
J.E. Luebering: Executive Director, Core Editorial
Andrea R. Field: Managing Editor, Compton’s by Britannica
Rosen Publishing
Carolyn DeCarlo: Editor
Nelson Sá: Art Director
Brian Garvey: Series Designer/Book Layout
Cindy Reiman: Photography Manager
Bruce Donnola: Photo Researcher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Duignan, Brian, editor. | DeCarlo, Carolyn, editor.
Title: The legislative branch : making laws / edited by Brian Duignan and Carolyn DeCarlo.
Description: New York : Britannica Educational Publishing, in Association with Rosen Educational
Services, 2019. | Series: Checks and balances in the U.S. government | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Audience: Grades 7-12.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017059716| ISBN 9781538301722 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: United States. Congress—Juvenile literature. | Legislative power—United States—
Juvenile literature. | Legislation—United States—Juvenile literature.
Classification: LCC JK1025 .L44 2019 | DDC 328.73—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059716
Manufactured in the United States of America
Photo credits: Cover, p. 1 Alex Wong/Getty Images (Congress), Lightspring/Shutterstock.com (scale), © iStockphoto.com/arsenisspyros
(capitol); p. 5 © MedioImages/Getty Images; p. 6 Riverside County Registrar/KRT/Newscom; p. 9 © Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
(digital file no. 3g07216); p. 16 © Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZC4-10297); p. 18 Win McNamee/Getty Images; p. 20 Karl
Gehring/Denver Post/Getty Images; p. 22 © Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. lc-usz61-269); pp. 26, 95 Bettmann/Getty Images;
p. 29 Visions of America/Universal Images Group/Getty Images; pp. 30, 77, 107 © Encyclopaedia Britannica; p. 32 © Architect of the Capitol;
p. 37 The Washington Post/Getty Images; p. 38 © AP Images; p. 41 © Lawrence Jackson – Official White House Photo; pp. 45, 89 Hulton
Archive/Getty Images; p. 48 © Harris & Ewing Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-hec-22504); p. 51 © U.S. Senate
Photo Studio; p. 56 © Dave Newman/Fotolia; p. 60 © Mike Criss; p. 64 © Chuck Kennedy - Official White House Photo; p. 67 © Peter Souza
- Official White House Photo; pp. 75, 86, 103 © Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; p. 91 MPI/Archive Photos/Getty Images; p. 105 ©
Tim Ross; p. 111 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � 4
CHAPTER ONE
Powers and Functions of the U.S.
Congress � � � � � � � � � � � � � 8
CHAPTER TWO
The U.S. Capitol and Library of
Congress � � � � � � � � � � � � � 24
CHAPTER THREE
The House and the Senate � � � � � � 40
CHAPTER FOUR
Major Legislation � � � � � � � � � 55
CHAPTER FIVE
Western Expansion and Overseas
Territories � � � � � � � � � � � � 70
CHAPTER SIX
Foreign Relations, Immigration, and
National Security � � � � � � � � � 84
CHAPTER SEVEN
Civil Liberties and Social Welfare � � 101
Conclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � 119
Glossary � � � � � � � � � � � � � 121
Bibliography � � � � � � � � � � �123
Index � � � � � � � � � � � � � �126
The characteristic function of all legislatures is the
making of law. In most political systems, however,
legislatures also have other tasks, such as selecting and
criticizing the government, supervising administration,
appropriating funds, ratifying treaties, impeaching offi-
cials of the executive and judicial branches of government,
accepting or refusing executive nominations, determining
election procedures, and conducting public hearings on
petitions. Legislatures, then, are not simply lawmaking
bodies. Neither do they monopolize the function of
making law. In most systems, the executive has a power
of veto over legislation, and, even where this is lacking,
the executive may exercise original or delegated powers
of legislation. Judges, also, often share in the lawmaking
process through the interpretation and application of stat-
utes or, as in the U.S. system, by means of judicial review
of legislation. Similarly, administrative officials exercise
quasi-legislative powers in making rules and deciding
cases that come before administrative tribunals.
A legislature may be unicameral, with one chamber,
or bicameral, with two chambers. Unicameral legislatures
are typical in small countries with unitary systems of
government—i.e., systems in which local or regional gov-
ernments may exist but in which the central government
4
retains ultimate sovereignty. Federal states, in which
the central government shares sovereignty with local or
regional governments, usually have bicameral legislatures,
with one house representing the main territorial subdivi-
sions. The United States is a classic example of a federal
system with a bicameral legislation: the U.S. Congress
consists of a House of Representatives, whose members
are elected from single-member districts of approximately
The west front of the U.S. Capitol building, Washington, D.C.,
where both houses of the U.S. Congress convene.
5
The Legislative Branch
equal population, and a Senate, consisting of two persons
from each state elected by the voters of that state. The
fact that all states are represented equally in the Senate
regardless of their size reflects the federal character of the
American union.
A unitary system of government does not necessar-
ily imply unicameralism. In fact, the legislatures of most
countries with unitary systems are bicameral, though one
chamber is usually more powerful than the other. The
United Kingdom, for example, has a unitary system with a
bicameral legislature, which consists of the House of Lords
and the House of Commons. Although in the United
States all fifty states except Nebraska have bicameral leg-
islatures, their govern-
mental systems are uni-
tary. In the forty-nine
U.S. states with bicam-
eral legislatures, the two
houses have equal legis-
lative authority, but the
so-called upper houses—
usually called senates—
have the special function
of confirming the gover-
nors’ appointments. The
procedures of the U.S.
House of Representa-
tives, which derive from
A woman with her child uses an electronic
voting system to exercise her right to vote
in California.
6
Introduction
a manual of procedure written by Thomas Jefferson, are
among the most elaborate of parliamentary rules.
Voting procedures range from state to state; a pop-
ular method is the electronic voting methods employed
in the California legislature and in some other states.
Another point of difference among legislatures concerns
their presiding officers. These are sometimes officials
who stand above party and exercise a neutral function as
parliamentary umpires; sometimes they are the leaders of
the majority party and, like the speaker of the U.S. House
of Representatives, major political figures; and sometimes
they are officials who, like the vice president of the United
States in his role as presiding officer of the Senate, exer-
cise a vote to break ties and otherwise perform mainly
ceremonial functions.
Likewise, legislative parties are of various types and
play a number of roles or functions. In the U.S. House of
Representatives, for example, the party is responsible for
assigning members to all standing committees; the party
leadership fills the major parliamentary offices, and the
party membership on committees reflects the proportion
of seats held by the party in the House as a whole. The
congressional party, however, is not disciplined to the
degree found in British and some other European legisla-
tive parties, and there are relatively few “party line” votes
in which all the members of one party vote against all the
members of the other party.
7
CHAPTER ONE
Powers and
Functions of the
U.S. Congress
The U.S. Congress, the legislative branch of the Amer-
ican federal system, was established under the Con-
stitution of 1789 and is separated structurally from the
executive and judicial branches of government. As noted
previously, it consists of two houses: the Senate, in which
each state, regardless of its size, is represented by two sen-
ators, and the House of Representatives, to which mem-
bers are elected on the basis of population. Among the
express powers of Congress as defined in the Constitution
are the power to lay and collect taxes, borrow money on
the credit of the United States, regulate commerce, coin
money, declare war, raise and support armies, and make
all laws necessary for the execution of its powers.
THE CONTINENTAL AND
CONFEDERATION CONGRESSES
The Congress established in 1789 was the successor of
the Continental Congress, which met in 1774 and 1775–81,
8
Powers and Functions of the U.S. Congress
and of the Confederation Congress, which met under the
Articles of Confederation (1781–89), the first constitution
of the United States. The First Continental Congress was
convened in Philadelphia in 1774 in response to the British
Parliament’s passage of the Intolerable (Coercive) Acts,
which were intended as punishment for the Boston Tea
Party and other acts of colonial defiance. Fifty-six depu-
ties in a single chamber represented all the colonies except
Georgia. Peyton Randolph of Virginia was unanimously
elected president, thus establishing usage of that term
as well as “Congress.” Other delegates included Patrick
Henry, George Washington, John and Samuel Adams,
and John Jay. Meeting in secret session, the body adopted
a declaration of personal rights, including life, liberty,
Leaders of the Continental Congress (left to right): John Adams,
Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson.
9