The Legislative part of our government is called Congress. Congress makes our laws. Congress is divided into 2 parts. One part is called the Senate. There are Senators from each of our states. Another part is called the House of Representatives. Representatives meet together to discuss ideas and decide if these ideas bills should become laws. There are Representatives. Congress can impeach and convict the president for high crimes, like treason or bribery. The House of Representatives has the power to bring impeachment charges against the President; the Senate has the power to convict and remove the President from office.
In addition, Supreme Court candidates are appointed by the President and are confirmed by the Senate. Judges can be removed from office by impeachment in the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. In this way, the system provides a measure, in addition to invalidating laws, for each branch to check the others. Please help us improve our site! Because the filibuster had so often been used to protect segregation, senators who favored civil rights had generally refrained from using the filibuster as a tactic.
After segregation was illegal, however, the filibuster became a more universally employed tactic. In , liberal Democrats led a movement to make cloture easier to establish, reducing the needed number of senators from two-thirds to three-fifths.
Despite that change, the filibuster has continued to distinguish the Senate from the House, the rules of which prohibit such tactics. Committees in both the House and Senate hold hearings on prospective legislation, collecting information and listening to testimony, before they vote on a bill that will be reported to the full House or Senate for debate, amendment, and passage.
Both the Senate and House must pass legislation in exactly the same form in order for it to be sent to the President for approval before it becomes law. Frequently, the two houses will pass different versions of the same piece of legislation. To resolve their differences they appoint members of each house to serve on a conference committee.
Once the conference committee reaches agreement, it reports back to the Senate and House, which must accept or reject the conference report, but cannot amend it any further.
The practical result of this complicated process is that legislation almost never passes in its original form, but is revised constantly until a sufficiently broad consensus can be reached. This helps to make sure that legislation benefits and appeals to large portions of the country rather than favoring one region or interest over the others.
To become law, the bill must still go to the White House. The President can approve and sign the bill or can veto—reject—the bill. It takes a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate to overturn a Presidential veto.
If Congress adjourns within ten days after sending a bill to the President, the President can decide not to act on it, neither signing nor formally vetoing it. This is called a pocket veto, which kills the bill, as Congress is out of session and cannot vote to overturn the veto. Presidents will often use the threat of a veto to convince Congress to pass a bill more to their liking. Presidents whose own party controls the majority in Congress will veto bills far less frequently than Presidents who face opposition majorities.
Gerald Ford, who had spent decades in Congress as the Republican leader of the House, issued many vetoes during his Presidency to establish more legislative control over a Congress with large Democratic majorities. In times of national emergency, the President can call the Congress into special session.
This was a critical feature during the nineteenth century, when Congress met for just a few months each year, but it became unnecessary in the twentieth century, when Congress began meeting year round. During wartime and periods of economic crisis, Congress has tended to give the President much more room to act, passing legislation quickly and with less second guessing.
During that period, members of Congress found themselves voting for bills on which they had held no hearings and sometimes had no chance to read in advance. In contrast to those who view the Constitution as expansive, there are others who see the role of the federal government as far more confined and insist that all powers not expressed in the Constitution belong to the states.
Tom A. Coburn, a medical doctor who was elected first to the House of Representatives and then to the U. All other powers are reserved for the states. I always found it ironic when my Republican colleagues would deliver passionate speeches criticizing the judicial branch for not respecting the Constitution when they were gladly joining their colleagues in the legislative branch in violating the very same document. The next time a member of Congress criticizes the Supreme Court for not respecting the Constitution they should be prepared to offer legislation rescinding about half of the federal budget that is used for purposes never envisioned by our founders.
Once the struggles between Congress and the President have ended and the bill becomes law, it is still subject to judicial review. In one of the most significant of the New Deal cases, the Supreme Court rejected the National Recovery Administration, which set production levels and wages for various industries, on the grounds that Congress had improperly delegated its own constitutional powers over commerce to an executive branch agency.
Many other Presidents were frustrated by court rulings that ran contrary to objectives. This is why Presidents take such care in making judicial appointments, and why the Senate so often resists Presidential choices.
Other than creating the Supreme Court, the Constitution said less about the judiciary than any other branch of the government. The Constitution left it to Congress to set the number of justices on the Supreme Court and to create the lower federal courts. Congress did this with the Judiciary Act of Over the next two centuries the federal judiciary has grown larger, more influential, and more controversial.
The U. Although federal law is supreme, state constitutions and courts are free to recognize rights beyond those included in the federal Constitution. Some federal judges have taken a more active approach to the law than others, striking down federal and state laws as unconstitutional. Both approaches weigh the accumulated court rulings and precedents and attempt to maintain some consistency in how the laws are interpreted. Sometimes the courts will dramatically reverse earlier rulings, declaring them to have been in error.
This was especially notable in when the Supreme Court unanimously declared school segregation unconstitutional, sixty years after a previous court had upheld racial segregation.
Most cases dealing with federal laws are heard in the lower federal courts and only a few cases reach the U. Supreme Court each term. Once a case reaches the Supreme Court through the appeals process, the Court can review, uphold, or overturn the decisions of other federal judges. In addition to the three branches, the federal government has also created a number of independent regulatory commissions that straddle the division of powers, performing quasi-administrative, legislative, and judicial functions.
Beginning with the Interstate Commerce Commission in and continuing with the Federal Trade Commission in , Securities and Exchange Commission in , and later agencies, these commissions combine executive, legislative, and judicial functions in an effort to resolve complex economic issues outside of the political arena. Congress created these agencies under the commerce clause, which grants Congress the right to oversee interstate commerce, a justification that the federal courts have accepted as constitutional.
This complex system of independence and interdependence among the branches of government also includes a system to punish those who act improperly and violate their offices.
Each house of Congress is authorized to discipline its own members, whether censuring or condemning them by a majority vote or expelling them by a two-thirds vote. In order for an impeached officer or judge to be convicted, the Senate must hold a trial and cast a two-thirds vote.
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