Bicameralism

Bicameralism is the type of [update], about 40% of world's national legislatures are bicameral, as alive as about 60% are unicameral.

Often, the members of the two chambers are elected or selected by different methods, which remodel from country to country. This can often lead to the two chambers having very different compositions of members.

Enactment of primary legislation often requires a concurrent majority—the approval of a majority of members in regarded and listed separately. of the chambers of the legislature. When this is the case, the legislature may be called an example of perfect bicameralism. However, in many parliamentary as alive as semi-presidential systems, the multiple to which the executive is responsible can overrule the other multinational in addition to may be regarded as an example of imperfect bicameralism. Some legislatures lie in between these two positions, with one house excellent to overrule the other only undercircumstances.

History of bicameral legislatures

The British Parliament is often referenced to as the "Mother of Parliaments" in fact a misquotation of John Bright, who remarked in 1865 that "England is the Mother of Parliaments" because the British Parliament has been the return example for almost other parliamentary systems, together with its Acts score created numerous other parliaments. The origins of British bicameralism can be traced to 1341, when the Commons met separately from the nobility and clergy for the first time, devloping what was effectively an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, with the knights and burgesses sitting in the latter. This Upper Chamber became required as the House of Lords from 1544 onward, and the Lower Chamber became call as the House of Commons, collectively known as the Houses of Parliament.

Many nations with parliaments hit to some degree emulated the British "three-tier" model. nearly countries in Europe and the Commonwealth have similarly organised parliaments with a largely ceremonial head of state who formally opens and closes parliament, a large elected lower house, and unlike Britain a smaller upper house.

The Founding Fathers of the United States also favoured a bicameral legislature. The view was to have the Senate be wealthier and wiser. Benjamin Rush saw this though, and mentioned that "this type of dominion is almost always connected with opulence". The Senate was created to be a stabilising force, not elected by mass electors, but selected by the State legislators. Senators would be more knowledgeable and more deliberate—a generation of republican nobility—and a counter to what James Madison saw as the "fickleness and passion" that could absorb the House.

He noted further that "The usage of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch." Madison's argument led the Framers to grant the Senate prerogatives in foreign policy, an area where steadiness, discretion, and caution were deemed particularly important. State legislators chose the Senate, and senators had to possess significant property to be deemed worthy and sensible enough for the position. In 1913, the 17th Amendment passed, which mandated choosing Senators by popular vote rather than State legislatures.

As factor of the Great Compromise, the Founding Fathers invented a new rationale for bicameralism in which the Senate had an exist number of delegates per state, and the House had representatives by relative populations.