How Congress Have Two Houses? Essay

The framers of the Constitution had a set image they wanted to put forth in America, and to get the document ratified they were forced to make compromises. Two of the most important compromises are the 3/5 clause and “Great Compromise”. During, the Constitutional Convention there was a deadlock about representation. Arguments from both sides seem valid, big states argue representation should be based on population while, small states argue it should be equal representation. In need for a solution, a few men proposed a bicameral legislature. Which, allows for both population based representation, and equal presentation by having a House of Representatives and a Senate. The Senate has equal representation that allows 2 senators from each state,

The legislative bodies were both referred to as Congress. The Articles operated under a unicameral system. The Constitution changed this system to bicameral, meaning two chambers. These chambers are the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both systems had to have members. The Articles determined that each state would have between two and seven members.

76) With this in mind the framers carefully and purposefully crafted a Constitution that divided federal powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. This division of power gave each branch the ability and authority to control the others through a specific system of checks and balances. One check on Congress was the design of a bicameral system where Congress was divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected by majority popular vote making them the direct representative of their constituencies. Members of the Senate would be elected by state legislatures making them direct representatives of the states, and proponents of the state’s rights and sovereignty. Joseph Story (1833) suggests that one main reason for the mode of appointing the Senate was to introduce a powerful check upon rash legislation, and prevent the national governments encroachment on the powers of the states (p.183). However, in passing the 17th Amendment the mode of electing the Senate as a means of partitioning federal and state power collapsed leaving the states unprotected from abuses of the central government.

Without the Great Compromise, the question of union among the states under a strong central government was hesitant. On the other hand, equal representation of states in the upper house flies in the face of the republican ideal of sovereignty in the people. It elevates states, which are nothing more than imaginary political lines drawn on a map, into supposedly-powerful entities and denies the principal of one man, one vote. Also, Senators from states with smaller populations need less time and money to reach out to their constituents than do Senators from highly populous states. Thus, Senators from smaller states can spend more time on the business of the nation, with a natural bias toward their own state’s interests, than can Senators from larger states. Despite these shortcomings, the system has worked, to greater or lesser degrees, for over two centuries. To change this system now would only bring political confusion and raise the same large state/small state concerns that plagued the convention delegates in 1787. The tension between proportional representation in the House and equal representation in the Senate is a check and balance between the unequal states which comprise the union. John Adams understood the power of checks and balances when he said “power must never be trusted without a

The book How Congress Works, by Lee H. Hamilton, tells us a brief summary of the interworking’s of congress. The book begins to convey the role of congress in chapter one, the author begins with congresses important roles in our democracy. Which are passing budgets, manage conflicts that arise, debate issues facing the country and most importantly to act within the system of checks and balances. In our government neither congress nor president is supreme, most of the authority is with the citizens. The United States government is balanced into three branches of government: Congress, POTUS, SCOTUS, the House of Representatives and the Senate: also between the Federal Government and the States. The States are broken down into different regions with different issues facing them and different interests eventually boiling down to the bill of rights. Congress has the power of lawmaking, along with what the President’s agenda is, recommending bills to congress, and the power of the President to veto bills. Congress contains the power of the purse in which Congress controls the power of taxation and spending. Congress legislations and policies control some aspects of our lives like taxation or when they regulate us. Our Government

“Perhaps the greatest debate undertaken by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 centered on how many representatives each state should have in the new government's lawmaking branch, the U.S. Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, resolving a great debate, required a Great Compromise.”(About) The Great Compromise that was reached by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth on July 16, 1787 incorporated the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey Plan in parts. It formed a bicameral legislature as proposed by the Virginia Plan. It also decided that the lower house would have representatives in proportion to population of each state. These representatives would be elected by the people. However, while deciding on the representation of states in the upper house, as per the tenets of the Great Compromise, each state would have two members, irrespective of its population.

The Role of the Senate and House of Representatives The Congress of the United States consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives which means the USA is bi-cambial. The Congress of the United States was created by Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution, adopted by the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. The Senate is composed of 100 Members, 2 from each State, who are elected to serve for a term of 6 years.

As a result of the two plans, the Great Compromise was created for the new Constitution and is still used today. The three branches were created with checks and balances to ensure no branch has too much power and two houses of legislature. The number of members of the House of Representatives is based on the population of each state and elected by the people while there are two members of the Senate for each state, elected by the state legislature.

In the Great Compromise it stated that the legislative branch would be divided up into two groups. These two groups were called the senate and the house of representatives. One side would be based off of population while the other half would be based off of equality. Each side would create laws. In the great compromise each state had one senate which would later change into two. The senate wasn't based on size or population it was the same for every state. The house of representatives however this was the side that was based off of population. This resulted in some states having more representatives than others because some states had more population than

Please address each question below with complete sentences and clear, specific explanation. The total word count of your writing should be between 750-1,250 words.

The idea of the Virginia plan to propose representation based on population became the House of Representatives. 10. The idea of the New Jersey Plan to propose representation based on one vote per state became the House of Senate. 11. The Constitutional Convention created the Great Compromise to have a bicameral legislature, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

There are big states and small states, and the small states felt that they were not being represented fairly. This is when the New Jersey Plan was made. There would be a House of Representatives which was based on population. The Constitution state in Article 1, Section 2 that “representatives… shall be apportioned… according to… (population)...” (Document D). There was also the Senate, and there would be two representatives from each state. The Constitution stated “The senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state…” (Document D). This was fight between big states and small states for equal representation and this was a fair compromise for everyone. No one state or person is able to gain too much power this way and everyone is fairly

In doc D, the authors explain that by having two houses in congress, one based on population and one on equality, neither the large or small states will have too much

This worked out to satisfaction of the smaller states and for the larger states they were given a House of Representatives that would consist of a larger body of representatives for each state in proportion to the amount of the people in that state.

The delegates compromised, deciding that seats in the House of Representatives would be distributed according to population and that seats in the Senate would be distributed equally among the states. The small states could rely on the Senate to defend their interests if the House passed legislation that threatened their rights. The framers of the Constitution specified that House members would be elected by popular vote every two years, so members of the House would be constantly in touch with the citizens that they represent. In contrast, the framers decided to shield the Senate from popular pressures by giving senators six-year terms.