The Legislature

The three branches of government are: legislature, executive,and judiciary.

A legislature is a type of representative assembly with thepower to create, amend and ratify laws. The law created by alegislature is called legislation or statutory law. In most systems,however, legislatures also have other tasks, such as selection andcriticism of the government, supervision of administration,ratification of treaties, impeachment of executive and judicial

officials. Legislatures, then, are not simply lawmaking bodies. Inmost systems the executive has a power of veto over legislation,and even where this is lacking, the executive may exercise originalor delegated powers of legislation.

Legislatures are known by many names, the most commonbeing parliament and congress. In parliamentary systems ofgovernment, the legislature is formally supreme and appoints theexecutive. In presidential system of government, the legislature isconsidered a power branch which is equal to, and independent of,the executive.

Legislatures differ greatly in their size, the procedures theyemploy, the role of political parties in legislative action. In size, theBritish House of Commons is among the largest; the Icelandiclower house, the New Zealand House of Representatives, and theSenate of Nevada are among the smallest. The primary componentsof a legislature are one or more chambers or houses- assemblies thatdebate and vote upon bills. A legislature with one house is calledunicameral. A bicameral legislature possesses two separatechambers, usually described as an upper house and a lower house,which often differ in duties and powers. Most legislatures arebicameral, although New Zealand, Denmark, the state ofQueensland in Australia have all abolished their second chamber.

In most parliamentary systems, the lower house is the morepowerful house while the upper house is merely a chamber ofadvice or review.

However, in presidential systems, the powers of the twohouses are often similar or equal. In federations it is typical for theupper house to represent the component states; the same applies tothe supranational legislature of the European Union. For thispurpose the upper house may either contain the delegates of stategovernments or be elected according to a formula that grants equalrepresentation to states with smaller populations, as is the case in

Austria and the modern United States.

In general, the legislature has a supervisory role over theactions of the executive, and may replace the Head of Governmentand/or individual ministers by a vote of (no) confidence or aprocedure of impeachment. On the other hand, it may be dissolvedby the Head of State, leading to new elections.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-16