Bicameral legislature Flashcards
what is Bicameral legislature
Bicameral means that Congress has two houses: the House of Representative and the Senate. We have the two houses of Congress due to a compromise made by the Founding Fathers during the Constitutional Convention.
what is Parliament
an assembly of the representatives of a political nation or people, often the supreme legislative authority.
what is Descriptive representation
Descriptive representation is the idea that a group elects an individual to represent them who in their own characteristics mirror some of the more frequent experiences and outward manifestations of the group.
what is Substantive representation
Substantive representation occurs when representatives’ opinions and actions reflect the wishes, needs, and interests of the people they represent.
what is Trustee
an individual person or member of a board given control or powers of administration of property in trust with a legal obligation to administer it solely for the purposes specified.
what is delegate
a person sent or authorized to represent others, in particular an elected representative sent to a conference.
what is Majority minority district
A majority-minority district is an electoral district, such as a United States congressional district, in which the majority of the constituents in the district are racial or ethnic minorities (as opposed to Non-Hispanic whites in the U.S.).
what is Malapportionment
Malapportionment is the creation of electoral districts with divergent ratios of voters to representatives.
what is Marginal district
A marginal district is one in which a close election takes place, where the winner gets less than 55 percent of the vote. A safe district is one where the margin is at least 60 percent of the vote.
what is Gerrymandering
In representative democracies, gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The manipulation may involve “cracking” or “packing”.
what is Wesbury vs. Sanders
The Georgia court case of Wesberry v. Sanders significantly expanded the concept of “one man, one vote” and is most often linked with the phrase. The court’s ruling on Wesberry v. Sanders explicitly stated that Congressional districts must be as equal in population as is practical.
what is Safe districts
A safe district is one where the margin is at least 60 percent of the vote. The percentage of the House districts that are considered safe is almost 90 percent.
what is Baker vs. Carr
A case in which the Court found that redistricting issues present justiciable questions, and in which the Court reframed its political question doctrine.
what is Shaw vs. Reno
Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in the area of redistricting and racial gerrymandering. After the 1990 census, North Carolina qualified to have a 12th district and drew it in a distinct snake-like manner in order to create a “majority-minority” Black district.
what is Miller vs. Johnson
Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, was a United States Supreme Court case concerning “affirmative gerrymandering/racial gerrymandering”, where racial minority-majority electoral districts are created during redistricting to increase minority Congressional representation.
what is Congressional caucus
A congressional caucus is a group of members of the United States Congress that meet to pursue common legislative objectives.
what is Committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more fully than would be possible if the assembly itself were considering them
what is Committee of the Whole
A committee of the whole is a meeting of a legislative or deliberative assembly using procedural rules that are based on those of a committee, except that in this case the committee includes all members of the assembly.
what is House Rules Committee
The Committee on Rules, or more commonly, the Rules Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is responsible for the rules under which bills will be presented to the House of Representatives, unlike other committees, which often deal with a specific area of policy.
what is Conference committees
A conference committee is a joint committee of the United States Congress appointed by the House of Representatives and Senate to resolve disagreements on a particular bill. A conference committee is usually composed of senior members of the standing committees of each house that originally considered the legislation
