Senate

11 Key excerpts on "Senate"

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  Democratic Governance and Political Part

  • Femi Omotoso, Michael Kehinde, Femi Omotoso, Michael Kehinde(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Spears Media Press

    (Publisher)

  In general terms, the Senate refers to an assemblage or committee of people who have the highest deliberative functions. It also denotes a council of citizens usually of the upper house of modern legislative assembly of nations such as the United States of America, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia and Nigeria among many others. In a more specific sense, the origin of the legislature in Nigeria can be traced to the forty-six members’ Legislative Council established under the constitution of 1922 (famous as the Sir Hugh Clifford Constitution). Unlike the Nigerian Council of 1914 serving in a mere advisory capac-ity to the governor, the Legislative Council made laws for the Colony and the Southern Provinces (Tamuno, 1967: 120), while the Governor retained the law-making power and in fact continued to enact laws for the Northern Provinces. A new constitution was published by Sir Arthur Richards in 1946 in response to the agitations of Nigerians for better participation in gov-ernment and/or self-government. Consequent on this, a new Legislative Council for the entire country was set up and the country was divided into three regions with regional legislatures, namely; North, West and East. The Central Council was composed of forty-five members, twenty-eight of whom were Nigerians. Four of these were elected while the remaining The Nigerian Senate 1999-2013 409 twenty-four were nominated by the Governor. Each province/region was represented by two official members. The Northern, Western and Eastern Provinces were represented by nine unofficial, six unofficial and five unof -ficial members in that order (Okonkwo, 1962: 255). The constitution also introduced Regional Councils which considered matters referred to them by the Governor and advised him on such. The Northern Region Council had two chambers (House of assembly and House of Chiefs), whereas the Western and Eastern Regions had a chamber each.

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  Esteemed Colleagues

  Civility and Deliberation in the U.S. Senate

  • Burdett A. Loomis(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Brookings Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  194 Senate AND EXECUTIVE 195 We then explore shifting partisanship and presidential relations in the Senate. The contemporary Senate has become a partisan body, despite the facade erected by norms of courtesy in debate and civility between sena-tors. From the evidence of both voting patterns and the testimony of indi-vidual senators, this heightened partisanship has had a profound effect upon the body. A driving force behind the current political state in the Senate is the changing character of its members. Senators known for com-promise, moderation, and institutional loyalty seemingly have been re-placed with more ideological and partisan members who see the chamber as a place to promote their party's agendas. As a consequence, life on Capitol Hill has become, at least temporarily, more acrimonious. 2 We also examine the politics of executive and judicial appointments. No political appointee to a federal agency can execute federal laws and regulations, no ambassador can represent the United States abroad, and no federal judge can be seated without having been confirmed by a major-ity vote of the Senate. Although congressional cooperation in appoint-ments is more the rule than the exception, senators are increasingly prepared to exploit their prerogatives. 3 Some senators routinely take advantage of their leverage to thwart presidential nominations if they consider the nomi-nees to be out of step with existing congressional majorities. 4 Others re-gard advice and consent not as a mere formality but as an important constitutional weapon guarding the independence of the Senate from the executive branch. Finally, there is the matter of formal and informal communication be-tween presidents and senators. All presidents since Franklin Roosevelt have sought to exercise legislative leadership in Congress, provide Congress with a primary wish list, and establish its legislative priorities. 5 Typically, however, such presidential leadership occurs at the margins.

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  The Senate

  From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock

  • Daniel Wirls(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of Virginia Press

    (Publisher)

  1 The Senate was placed at the crossroads of the national system of separated institutions sharing power and at the intersection of state and national sovereignty. First, the Senate was half of a bicameral Congress endowed with legislative power. Second, it shared in the executive power of appointments and treaties, with a potentially decisive role in the composition of the Supreme Court. Finally, the politics of the Constitutional Convention added another special purpose—the Senate would be the institutional embodiment of federalism and state power in the national government. It was to be the smaller, wiser, and more detached legislative chamber, the institutional home of state power and state equality and the quasi-council to the executive on appointments and treaties. In this way the Senate became the crucible for resolving several of the thorniest problems of American constitutionalism. In particular, the Senate was exceptional for the manifest tension and outright contradictions between its roles as both a Senate of far-sighted and detached national statesmen and a Senate of delegates sent by self-interested state legislatures. That tension was at the heart of the Constitutional Convention, and from the time the Senate first achieved a quorum, on April 6, 1789, to today, it has never been resolved.

  Its rich mixture of purposes and powers continues to make the Senate unique among the world’s political institutions. As the equal partner in one of the world’s most independent and robust legislatures, it is the most powerful upper house in the world. Whereas many countries have unicameral legislatures or upper houses or Senates with significantly less power or even only symbolic importance, the US Senate combines a formidable array of institutional characteristics and powers that make it distinctive and autonomous. The higher age and citizenship requirements for members, as well as the longer and staggered terms, contribute, more or less, to differences in the character of the upper house compared to the lower. Similarly, state equality in the Senate contrasts sharply with the proportional representation of the House. The distinctions produced by elections are reinforced by the institutional elements. The House and Senate are granted nearly equal powers; in fact, the Senate has a few exclusive powers, including the approval of treaties and appointments, that give it a singular status among upper houses. And unlike many upper houses, the modern Senate has enjoyed at least equal (un)popularity and (dis)respect among the people.2

  But it is this hybridity and complexity that have allowed the Senate over the years to conflate the various aspects of its constitutional role into a generalized idea that it has a special and different purpose that transcends the multiple but carefully defined roles given it by the Constitution. In particular, senators have drawn on and distorted the collection of attributes and responsibilities outlined above to justify what became the dominant feature of the Senate: its rules of procedure, which create and protect minority power, and the effect of those rules on Senate behavior. Modern senators have tended to portray minority power, as structured by Senate rules of procedure, as the sine qua non and raison d’être of their institution. This goes directly against what the Constitution actually mandated. The constitutional means to the end of better deliberation—first and foremost its smaller size, but also the age of senators and their length of citizenship, longer terms, and, originally, selection by state legislatures—have, over time, been displaced in favor of rules created by the Senate that empower minority obstruction.

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  The Legislative Branch of the Federal Government

  Purpose, Process, and People

  • Britannica Educational Publishing, Brian Duignan(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Britannica Educational Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Ratification of treaties requires a two-thirds majority of all senators present and a simple majority for approval of important public appointments, such as those of cabinet members, ambassadors, and judges of the Supreme Court. The Senate also adjudicates impeachment proceedings initiated in the House of Representatives, a two-thirds majority being necessary for conviction.

  As in the House of Representatives, political parties and the committee system dominate procedure and organization. Each party elects a leader, generally a senator of considerable influence in his own right, to coordinate Senate activities. The Senate leaders also play an important role in appointing members of their party to the Senate committees, which consider and process legislation and exercise general control over government agencies and departments. Sixteen standing committees are grouped mainly around major policy areas, each having staffs, budgets, and various subcommittees. Among important standing committees are those on appropriations, finance, government operations, and foreign relations. At “mark-up” sessions, which may be open or closed, the final language for a law is considered. Select and special committees are also created to make studies or to conduct investigations and report to the Senate—for example, the Select Committee on Ethics and the Special Committee on Aging.

  The smaller membership of the Senate permits more extended debate than is common in the House of Representatives. Indeed, unlike the House of Representatives, in which speaking time is limited by rule, the Senate allows unlimited debate on a bill. Occasionally a minority of senators (sometimes even a single senator), using a parliamentary tactic known as a filibuster, will attempt to delay or prevent action on a bill by talking so long that the majority either grants concessions or withdraws the bill. In 1957 Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina talked for more than 24 hours, the longest individual filibuster on record, as part of an unsuccessful attempt by Southern senators to obstruct civil rights legislation. To check a filibuster, three-fifths of the Senate membership must vote for cloture (or closure); if the bill under debate would change the Senate’s standing rules, cloture may be invoked only on a vote of two-thirds of those present. The cloture motion itself is not debatable. Debate on the bill is then limited to an additional 30 hours.

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  The Government of France

  • Joseph Barthelemy, J. Bayard Morris(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter VThe Senate

  The Senate of the 1875 Constitution was modelled, at least so far as concerns its general character and authority, on the Chamber of Peers of the Restoration and July Monarchy, and this Chamber of Peers had itself been modelled on the English House of Lords.

  According to the purposes of the Constitution the Senate is primarily a deliberative assembly, and it must exercise its influence in favour of moderation and stability. Its duty is to oppose at least a temporary resistance to the unconsidered enthusiasms of the Chamber of Deputies, who are younger, more numerous, and represent a more direct expression of universal suffrage.

  In order to play this part successfully important rights have been conferred upon it, which are in principle the same as those of the Chamber of Deputies. Thus the initiation of laws can proceed from a Senator just as well as from a Deputy; and the government can at its pleasure submit the draft of a law to the Senate or to the Chamber.

  There are, however, certain exceptions to this rule concerning the equality of the two assemblies. The first is directly imitated from the English Constitution, namely, that finance bills must first be brought before the Chamber of Deputies and passed by them. The Chamber, it is said, has a right of priority in financial matters; but it must be insisted that this preference is, in theory, one of priority and nothing more. For several years, however, the Chamber of Deputies has adopted the custom of putting off the budget vote to the last moment before it comes into operation, in such a way that the Senate at the penalty of having to start the year without a budget finds itself forced to rush through the examination of the budget referred to it by the Chamber, Usually the Senate accepts it with very slight modifications, though raising at the same time periodic but vain protestations against this manoeuvre of the people's Chamber. There is no valid reason for this inferiority of the Senate, since, unlike the House of Lords, whose rules have been rather blindly imposed upon it, the Senate represents, doubtless somewhat indirectly, the whole body of taxpayers.

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  Constitutional Government in the United States

  • Woodrow Wilson(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wilson Press

    (Publisher)

  As I have already said in a previous lecture, it is impossible to characterize the United States in any single generalization; and for that very reason it is impossible to sum up the Senate in any single phrase or summary description. For the Senate is as various as the country it represents. It represents the country, not the people: the country in its many diverse sections, not the population of the country, which tends to become uniform where it is concentrated.

  Most of the leading figures among the active public men of the country are now to be found in the Senate, not in the House. This was not formerly the case. Before the House became an effective, non-debating organ of business, it shared quite equally with the Senate the leading politicians of the country; but it has not been so of recent years. Organization swallows men up, debate individualizes them, and men of strong character and active minds always prefer the position in which they will be freest to speak and act for themselves. The Senate has always been a favorite goal of ambition for our public men, but it has become more and more the place of their preference as the House has more and more surrendered to it the function of public counsel.

  Of course, there are fewer senators than members of the House, and it is a more conspicuous thing to be one of a body of ninety than to be one of a body of three hundred and fifty-seven. Moreover, the tenure of a senator of the United States is three times as long as the tenure of a member of the House of Representatives, and every member of the Senate must feel it a considerable advantage that six years instead of two are given him in which to make his impression on the country. There is time to find out what he is about and to master a difficult task. Both the smaller membership of the Senate and the longer term of its members contribute to individualize the men who compose it and to give them an advantage and importance which members of the House do not often have, unless they rise to one of the three or four places of real power which crown the committee organization of the representative chamber.

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  The Modern Senate of Canada 1925-1963

  • Frank Kunz(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • University of Toronto Press

    (Publisher)

  THE POWERS OF THE Senate AND RELATIONS BETWEEN THE TWO HOUSES 12 IT SEEMS APPROPRIATE to wind up the factual discussion of the Senate's work and functions with a statement of its powers and the way in which they are exercised. Although party discipline and the ascendency of the cabinet have rendered somewhat anachronistic the traditional notion which conceived Parliament in terms of two opposing chambers, it is still possible in a technical sense to speak of the powers of the Senate as a corporate entity in its relations with the House of Commons. The two main criteria of assessment are the Senate's power over money bills and its power of delaying and rejecting legislation. In both, the Senate's prerogatives remained unchanged since Confederation. Unlike the House of Lords, which has suffered considerable curtailments in its powers on two separate occasions in the last fifty years, the power and position of the Senate has never been seriously threatened. The reason for this relative security has been that, although the legal powers of the Senate are unparalleled among second chambers in parliamentary regimes, so has been the Senate's moderation and discretion to use them. Curiously, both the scope of these powers and the caution with which the Senate has used them have been closely connected with the principles governing the Senate's federal role. Whereas the granting of the powers was prompted by the original theory concerning the Senate's function to protect the provinces, the exercise of the powers has been shaped by the Senate's understanding of the practical limits of that function. 1. The Senate and Financial Legislation In the case of financial legislation the conflict of views between the two chambers has centred around the question whether the Senate has a 338 / THE MODERN Senate OF CANADA right to amend money bills as that term is generally understood.

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  Poli Sci Fi

  An Introduction to Political Science through Science Fiction

  • Michael A. Allen, Justin S. Vaughn(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  With its massive collection of voices and its apparent inability to include all voices, the Galactic Senate seems destined to fall apart as a representative body. The Senate requires a better institutional structure, notably better rules surrounding debate and political inclusion, in order to truly function as a representative body. Unfortunately, these are not the only structural problems the Senate faces. As we will see below, the Galactic Senate not only fails to represent its citizens, but it is also unable to carry out its own directives. I Cannot Fight a War for You The first of two factors that shape a legislature’s power is the legal powers it is given as well as the actual resources it has to carry out those legal responsibilities. To expand on how legislative capacity hinges on both legal rules and administrative resources, it is useful to turn to the American example. Starting first with legislative reach, this is really a discussion of federalism, or how policymaking responsibilities will be divided between national and local legislative bodies. In practice, political power in a society exists along a continuum. At one extreme, political institutions can be organized in a unitary fashion, where a single actor at the national level holds all power. At the other end of this continuum is a confederal system, where most power is local and divided among many local political actors. In each of these systems, the reach of the legislature can vary wildly – from granting legislatures a great deal of power in the former to a more restricted set of powers and policy arenas in the latter. 7 The U.S. Constitution lays out a number of formal federal powers – including coining money, building post roads, and providing national defense – while turning all other powers over to the state governments

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  Congressional Government

  A Study in American Politics

  • Woodrow Wilson(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  “The value, spirit, and essence of the House of Commons,” said Burke, “consists in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation;” but the image of the nation’s feelings should not be the only thing reflected by the constitution of a free government. It is indispensable that, besides the House of Representatives which runs on all fours with popular sentiment, we should have a body like the Senate which may refuse to run with it at all when it seems to be wrong — a body which has time and security enough to keep its head, if only now and then and but for a little while, till other people have had time to think. The Senate is fitted to do deliberately and well the revising which is its properest function, because its position as a representative of state sovereignty is one of eminent dignity, securing for it ready and sincere respect, and because popular demands, ere they reach it with definite and authoritative suggestion, are diluted by passage through the feelings and conclusions of the state legislatures, which are the Senate’s only immediate constituents. The Senate commonly feels with the House, but it does not, so to say, feel so fast. It at least has a chance to be the express image of those judgments of the nation which are slower and more temperate than its feelings.

  This it is which makes the Senate “the most powerful and efficient second chamber that exists,” 1 and this it is which constitutes its functions one of the effectual checks, one of the real balances, of our system; though it is made to seem very insignificant in the literary theory of the Constitution, where the checks of state upon federal authorities, of executive prerogatives upon legislative powers, and of Judiciary upon President and Congress, though some of them in reality inoperative from the first and all of them weakened by many “ifs” and “buts,” are made to figure in the leading rôles, as the characteristic Virtues, triumphing over the characteristic Vices, of our new and original political Morality-play.

  It should, however, be accounted a deduction from the Senate’s usefulness that it is seldom sure of more than two thirds of itself for more than four years at a time. In order that its life may be perpetual, one third of its membership is renewed or changed every two years, each third taking its turn at change or renewal in regular succession; and this device has, of course, an appreciably weakening effect on the legislative sinews of the Senate. Because the Senate mixes the parties in the composition of its Committees just as the House does, and those Committees must, consequently, be subjected to modification whenever the biennial senatorial elections bring in new men, freshly promoted from the House or from gubernatorial chairs. Places must be found for them at once in the working organization which busies itself in the .committee-rooms. Six years is not the term of the Senate, but only of each Senator. Reckoning from any year in which one third of the Senate is elected, the term of the majority, — the two thirds not affected by the election, — is an average of the four and the two years which it has to live. There is never a time at which two thirds of the Senate have more than four years of appointed service before them. And this constant liability to change must, of course, materially affect the policy of the body. The time assured it in which to carry out any enterprise of policy upon which it may embark is seldom more than two years, the term of the House. It may be checked no less effectually than the lower House by the biennial elections, albeit the changes brought about in its membership are effected, not directly by the people, but indirectly and more slowly by the mediate operation of public opinion through the legislatures of the States.

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  A Federal Republic

  Australia's Constitutional System of Government

  • Brian Galligan(Author)
  • 1995(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  To distinguish the two, this broader sense might be called ‘responsible governance’. Clearly the founders’ design of the Senate with virtually coequal legislative power deeply affected the executive as well as the legislature in the Australian consti tutional system. The Senate provides a powerful institutional check on the executive as well as on the legislature in ways that are quite different from either the British or the American constitutions. While this can be used to frustrate responsible government, it can more properly be used to enhance responsible governance. Since the Australian founders did not specify the details of responsible government in the Constitution, it is hardly surprising that they did not define precisely how the government would relate to the Senate. The broad structure was clear and was summarised by Reid and Forrest as follows: There was never any doubt that the Prime Minister and most of the Executive Ministers of State would be members of the House of Representatives. The financial powers of that House made it imperative that, if there was to be stability in government, it was the House or Representatives that the Executive Government must control. (1989: 469) 88 A FEDERAL REPUBLIC The still unresolved question is how much control the government exercises over the Senate. Reid and Forrest claim that the Constitution ‘was designed to give the Executive Government distinct advantages over the two elected houses’. In support of this claim they point out that the first executive was appointed before the first Commonwealth parliament was elected, and the executive is vested with the powers of dissolving parliament and appointing the time for holding its sessions. Never theless, the Senate is partly quarantined from executive control and has carved out for itself an independent role in Australian governance.

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  A Companion to the United States Constitution and Its Amendments

  • John R. Vile(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Like members of the House, senators must meet certain age, citizenship, and residency requirements. By requiring senators to be at least thirty (rather than twenty-five) and nine years a citizen (instead of seven), the framers hoped to create a body that would be more stable and mature than the House of Representatives.

  Significantly, membership in the Senate is neither hereditary, as in the British House of Lords, nor do senators serve for life. The differences between the U.S. House and Senate flow from differing sizes of the bodies, differing term lengths, and differing sizes of their constituencies rather than from special wealth or privilege.

  Article I, Section 3. [4] The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided. The Legislative Role of the Vice President

  Although the Constitution embodies the theory of separation of powers, the framers did not establish a hermetic, or airtight, relationship among the branches, and they frequently share powers. Thus, the Constitution designates the vice president, who is chiefly a member of the executive branch, as president of the Senate, with the power to cast tie-breaking votes. Because presidents often assign extraconstitutional duties to their vice presidents, most vice presidents allow the president pro tempore of the Senate to preside over most sessions. The power to preside and cast deciding votes, however, can be important in cases such as that of 2021, where the Senate was equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, and Vice President Kamala Harris had the power to cast deciding votes.

  Article I, Section 3. [5] The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

  Other Senate Officers

  As in the case of the House, the Constitution contains relatively little about the specific responsibilities of officers in the Senate, which selects its own leaders. While the Constitution vests the vice president and the president pro tempore with the task of presiding, the Senate can distribute other roles and functions relatively free of constitutional limitations. Like the House, the current Senate has both a majority and a minority leader, as well as whips, who try to rally votes by members of their respective parties.

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