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Structure, powers, leadership, committees, lawmaking process, and congressional behavior
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Congress is the first branch — Article I is the longest in the Constitution, and the powers of Congress are the most extensively enumerated. Yet Congress today is also the most institutionally fragmented and publicly unpopular of the three branches. Understanding Congress means understanding both its constitutional design AND the day-to-day politics of how 535 members try (or fail) to make law.
| Feature | House (435) | Senate (100) |
|---|---|---|
| Term | 2 years | 6 years (1/3 every cycle) |
| Constituency | District | Whole state |
| Min. age | 25 | 30 |
| Citizenship |
List THREE structural differences between the House and Senate, and explain ONE consequence each difference has for how legislation is made.
Term length — House 2 years, Senate 6 years. Consequence: House members face constant reelection pressure and respond more quickly to public opinion; senators can take longer-horizon, less popular positions.
Constituency — House represents a district (~770,000 people), Senate represents an entire state. Consequence: Senators must build broader, often more ideologically diverse coalitions; House members can specialize in narrower local interests.
Debate rules — House debate is tightly limited by the Rules Committee; Senate allows filibuster (effectively requires 60 votes to end debate). Consequence: legislation passes the House on simple majorities (often along party lines) but must clear a 60-vote threshold in the Senate, giving the minority party real veto power and producing more cross-party negotiation.
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| 7 yrs |
| 9 yrs |
| Distinctive powers | Originate revenue bills; impeach | Try impeachments; confirm appointments; ratify treaties (2/3) |
| Style | More majoritarian, party-driven, hierarchical | More individualistic; filibuster magnifies minority power |
The two chambers were designed to represent different things — the House representing the people directly, the Senate the states (until the 17th Amendment in 1913 made senators directly elected by voters).
Enumerated: tax, borrow, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, coin money, declare war, raise and support armies, establish post offices, naturalization, etc. Plus the Necessary and Proper Clause for implied powers.
Senate tradition allows extended debate to block a bill. Cloture (Rule XXII) requires 60 votes to end debate. The filibuster effectively makes 60 the working majority needed to pass most ordinary legislation. Exception: budget reconciliation requires only 51, and confirmations have been exempted (judicial nominees in 2013/2017).
Every 10 years after the Census, House district lines are redrawn. State legislatures (or commissions in some states) control the process and can engage in partisan gerrymandering (drawing lines to favor a party) or racial gerrymandering (mostly illegal under the Voting Rights Act and Shaw v. Reno, 1993). The Supreme Court ruled partisan gerrymandering claims non-justiciable in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), leaving the issue to state courts and political processes.
Polarization, gerrymandered safe districts, growing executive unilateralism, the filibuster supermajority requirement, and short legislative work weeks all combine to make passing major legislation increasingly rare. Yet Congress remains the most direct constitutional channel for popular input into national policy.
(Other valid differences: minimum age, distinctive powers like the House originating revenue bills or the Senate confirming nominees and ratifying treaties.)
Define the filibuster and cloture. What number of votes is required to invoke cloture under Senate Rule XXII?
Filibuster: a Senate procedural tactic in which one or more senators extend debate on a bill (or nomination) indefinitely to delay or block a vote. Originally required actual continuous speaking, today usually just requires the threat.
Cloture: the procedure to END debate and force a vote. Established by Senate Rule XXII in 1917 and amended over time.
Vote required: 60 senators (three-fifths of the chamber) — this is what makes 60 the practical working majority needed to pass most ordinary legislation in the Senate. (Exceptions: budget reconciliation requires only 51, and confirmations were exempted from filibuster — judicial nominees by Democrats in 2013, Supreme Court nominees by Republicans in 2017.)
Compare the trustee, delegate, and politico models of representation. Which model would best describe a senator who votes against a popular tax cut because she believes it will explode the deficit? Briefly justify.
A senator who votes AGAINST a popular tax cut because of long-term fiscal consequences is acting as a TRUSTEE. She is substituting her own judgment about the public good (or future generations' interests) for the immediate, expressed preferences of her constituents. Edmund Burke's 1774 speech to the electors of Bristol is the classic statement of this view.
Explain how a bill that passes both chambers but in DIFFERENT versions becomes a single law. What committee handles this and what role does it play?
When the House and Senate pass DIFFERENT versions of the same bill, leaders typically create a conference committee — a temporary joint committee with members from both chambers, usually drawn from the original substantive committees that handled the bill.
Role of the conference committee:
If both chambers pass the conference report, the unified bill goes to the President for signature or veto. If either chamber rejects the conference report, the bill dies or goes back for another round of negotiation.
Note: in recent years, formal conference committees have become rarer; leaders often negotiate compromises informally and use the amendment trade procedure ("ping-pong") to move identical text between chambers.
In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable in federal court. Explain (a) what partisan gerrymandering is, (b) what the Court's reasoning was, and (c) what avenues remain for challenging partisan gerrymanders.
(a) Partisan gerrymandering: drawing legislative district lines to maximize the political advantage of the party in control of redistricting — typically by packing the opposing party into a few overwhelmingly safe districts and cracking its remaining voters across many districts in which it can't win. Result: the party drawing the map can win a disproportionate share of seats relative to its statewide vote share.
(b) Court's reasoning (Chief Justice Roberts): Federal courts have no "judicially manageable standard" for deciding when partisan considerations cross from "ordinary" into "unconstitutional excess." How much partisanship is too much? The Constitution's text gives federal courts no answer, and asking judges to second-guess fundamentally political line-drawing decisions is not the kind of question federal courts are equipped to resolve. Therefore the issue is a non-justiciable political question — the Court will not intervene.
(c) Remaining avenues:
Net effect of Rucho: moves the gerrymandering fight from federal courts into state courts and political processes, with very different outcomes across states.