The Bicameral System

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.

When the Framers of the Constitution met in Philadelphia, they came together with one common purpose in mind. They needed to form a fair and solid system of government that would stand the test of time; one that was both fair for the people and would not involve a monarchy. Each of these men had their own ideas on what would constitute this system, however, so many compromises had to be made. Together, the men gathered in Philadelphia created a federal system of government and drafted a constitution outlining this government. They took care in developing three branches of federal government with a system of checks and balances so that no one branch would gain too much power, thus avoiding any

Second, the Constitution played an important role in the why the two party system worked so well during this period. The Constitution created a system of government, which distributed power across three levels of government, so that no one political body had ultimate power. The people

In the “Virginia Plan vs. New Jersey Plan” both plans called for a strong national government with 3 branches which led to the Great Compromise. The Great Compromise provided for a bicameral congress. The bicameral structure wanted to accommodate both large and small states unlike the unicameral which only included the small vote.

They would also only have a single house in the national legislature. It also required confirmation by every state legislature as opposed to the three-fourths of the state conventions or legislatures. However the views under the Constitution of 1787 held two houses of congress, a house of representatives chosen by the people for a term of two years versus the annual term of its counter parting document. The U.S. senate would also be selected by the state legislature and serve terms of six years. By having longer terms and a non-unanimous vote there was more consistency with governing tactics and cut down on petty problems due to disagreements. The articles of confederation also allowed congress to regulate foreign commerce by treaties as did the Constitution, however the Articles held no check on conflicting state regulations, but the Constitution states that all state regulation must obtain congressional consent.

The current method of representation in the US congress was created under the Connecticut plan, or the Great Compromise. Two plans were devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787: the Virginia plan, which detailed representation based on a state’s population, and the New Jersey plan, which called for each state to have equal representation in Congress. The Great Compromise was a mixture of those two plans and proposed a bicameral legislature with population based representation in the House and equal representation between the states in the Senate. Although the founders may have eventually came to compromise, it wasn’t a simple process. The Virginia Plan had favored large states and the New Jersey plan had favored the smaller states;

Based on the bicameral system, larger states would get representation according to the population in the lower house and smaller states would get equal representation in the upper house. The compromise

Under the Constitution, legislation was bicameral, or divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. Disadvantages of bicameral legislatures are the delay of the lawmaking process and the possibility to waste government resources. This was an effect of the Great Compromise of

Appearing as multiple-choice questions. The purpose of setting up two-house state legislatures was divide power where? Governor and The legislature Page 177 In a republic, people rule through The representatives They elect. pg 177

The Articles of Confederation was the first constitution of the United States. This constitution was used from 1781 until 1789. While writing this document, the founders still had a fear of central authority after the American Revolution. Because of this fear, our first constitution had many weaknesses. Our country was still very afraid that too much power given to the central government would turn into a similar situation like they faced with Great Britain.

Criminal Justice reform has dramatically increased lately, and has become a current issue amongst all states and more than enough voters mandating a response from Congress.

The Founding Fathers were thinking of ideas for what to include in the new government. They came up with Equal representation and Proportional representation. Small states favored Equal representation because each state who have the same amount of votes. Instead of the larger states getting more votes than the smaller ones. Larger states favored Proportional representation

The unicameral system of Congress proposed by the Articles was due to the fear of concentrated power that usually happened in a monarchy. Unfortunately, that idea

The bicameral (two-house) Congress emerged from a compromise between delegates from large and small states at the Constitutional Convention, which convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States. The Articles of Confederation, which had governed the country since 1783, left the national government powerless to resolve trade disputes with other countries and to