Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Congress
A. The need for effective power after the failure of government under the
Articles..
On the whole they feared that power in the hands of a single individual
would be abused and the people would suffer. This in part explains why
they placed a considerable amount of power in the legislative branch.
C. Problems for those who believe that the Constitution must be “strictly”
interpreted.
Note that Congress has authority that gets it involved in the business of the
other two branches…
– Education
– Constituent Service
– Conflict Resolution
– Representation -- 2 conflicting types: personal judgement v. reflecting
what constituents want
– Oversight – involved in “executive” and/or “judicial” policymaking?
– **Lawmaking - same here? All three branches get into one another’s
business – “checks and balances.”)
Because of the large number of members in the House there are numerous
formal rules to govern activity on the floor and in committees. Since there are
considerably fewer members in the Senate, there are fewer restrictions on
members on the floor and in committees.
1. Debate on the floor of the House is strictly limited to the time allotted by
the Rules Committee. On many bills not every member will be allotted
time to debate.
V. Congressional Elections can highlight the differences between the House and
Senate
A. Article I, Section 2 calls for the “census” to be conducted for the purpose of
apportionment…
Yet, reapportionment can result in a political problem within a state, as each state
legislature must sometimes engage in “redistricting” or redrawing district lines to
account for changes in apportionment. For those states that have more than one
representative, the separate districts must have an equal number of people in each district.
prior to 1964, some congressional districts had populations up to three times larger than
others, an effect called malapportionment. The federal courts did nothing about this
because they considered it a “political” issue; one not subject to court review. Then…
First enforced the idea of “one-person, one-vote” in state legislative seats in Reynolds v.
Sims (1964), then in Congressional seats in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964).
C. Also, political parties want to construct districts that maximize their chance of
gaining more congressional seats. This concept of designing a district for the advantage
of the party is known as gerrymandering. In Davis v. Bandemer (1986) the U. S.
Supreme Court for the first time said that gerrymandering was “justiceable.” Then in
Miller v. Johnson (1995) the Court ruled that gerrymandering by using race as a sole
criterion to create “minority-majority” congressional districts violated “equal protection.”
In the end, how powerful is Congress and how does it go about it’s business? I like to
focus on two themes: the accumulation and decentralization of power over time.
4. House Whips - both the majority and minority parties have "whips" whose job is
to assists their party leaders, and to encourage party loyalty among House members.
Senate Whips - as in the House, both the majority and minority parties have whips whose
job is to assists their party leaders, and to encourage party loyalty among Senate
members.
D. How has leadership changed over time? How has leadership become less
powerful? [explain each]
Congress
Interests Bureaucracy