A Survey of USA: ----- Congress and Judicial Branch Prof. Niangen Huang.

A Survey of USA: ----- Congress and Judicial Branch

Prof. Niangen Huang

Congress and Judicial Branch

1.What qualifications are prescribed for a Representative and a Senator?

2.What are the special powers of the House?3.What are the special powers of the Senate?4.Why is the voting in Congress often confusing?5.In the legislative process, how do the interest

groups exert influence on legislators?6.What is the relation between the state courts

and federal courts?


Congress is the legislative branch of the national government and consists of two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

According to the Constitution, the two houses are of equal importance and check each other.


The Constitution gives each state, be it big or small, two Senators and provides that Representatives shall be apportioned among the states according to population.

The Senate has 100 senators and the House of Representatives has 435 members, roughly with one for each half a million inhabitants.


All members of Congress are successful politicians, mostly between the age of 35 and 70.

The entire membership of the House of Representatives is elected every second year. Elections for the six-year Senate terms are staggered, so that one-third of the Senate's 100 members are chosen every two years.

The Constitution sets up no major barriers to holding office except age and citizenship.

Members of the House of Representatives must be 25 years old and must have been citizens for seven years.

Senators must be at least 30 and must have been citizens for nine years.


The composition of Congress does not reflect the socioeconomic makeup of the people as a whole. The overwhelming number of national

legislators are male (95 percent), well educated, middle-aged, and from middle or up-per-middle-income backgrounds.

Congress members were also mainly White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

It is still true that there are fewer blacks and women in Congress than in the general public.


Getting elected to Congress depends on a number of factors: party strength in the area, personal character and appeal, first-term or incumbent status, occasional national tides, campaign strategies and fundraising abilities.


If a person decided to run for the House of Representatives, he must first plan a primary race, unless there are no opponents for the party's nomination. The first step for him to do is to build a personal

organization, because the party organization usually stays neutral until the nomination is decided.

The next step is to raise funds to hire campaign managers and technicians, to buy television and other advertising, to conduct polls, and so on.

Most congressional campaigns cost under $ 500,000, but in recent years the top ten spenders laid out over $ 1 million for the House.

Congress and Judicial Branch Running for the Senate is usually

intense. The race may easily cost a million

dollars. Candidates for the Senate are far more visible than those for the House. They find it more important to take positions on national problems, and they cannot duck tough issues very easily.

Congress and Judicial Branch The election of Congressmen is a regional a

ffair. A Senator is chosen by all the voters in his state, and a representative is elected in each congressional district of nearly the same population in the state. This forces the American Congressmen to rely heavily on his local support. This is one of the reasons why the voting in Congress is often confusing.

A Congressman usually votes to win the favour of his local district not to, conform to or support the policy of his party.


The constitution is generous in its grant of powers to Congress. In the very first article the framers outlined the structure, powers, and responsibilities of Congress giving it "all legislative powers herein granted."

Among these powers are the power to "spend and tax in order to provide for the

common defense and general welfare of the United States"; the power to borrow money; the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and

among states; the power to declare war, raise and support armies, and

provide and maintain a navy; the power to establish post offices and post roads; the power to set up the federal courts under the Supreme

Court. the Constitution gave the Congress the right "to make all laws

which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution“.


Several nonlegislative functions were also granted, such as participating in the process of constitutional amendment and impeachment (given to the House), and trying an impeached federal officer (given to the Senate).

The Constitution confers special additional responsibilities on the Senate.

The Senate has the power to confirm presidential nominations.

The Senate must also give its consent, by a two-thirds vote of the senators present, before a president may ratify a treaty. This gives the Senate a special role in foreign policy.


The House also has some special responsibilities, but these have not proved to be as important as those given to the Senate. For example, all revenue bills must

originate in the House. In fact, this has made little practical difference, because the Senate has freely amended hills that originate in the House, and has changed everything except the title.


The single most important fact about Congress is the dispersion of power between the two houses. The Senate and the House each has

an absolute veto over the other's law making. Each house runs its own affairs, sets its own rules, and conducts its own investigations.

The law-making role, however, is shared.

Congress and Judicial Branch It is sometimes said that Congress is a

collection of committees that come together in a chamber every once in a while to approve one another's actions. (There is much truth in this. )

Almost from the beginning Congress has relied on committees to get much of its work done. The main struggle over legislation takes place in committees and especially in subcommittees, for this is where the basic work of Congress is done.

Usually committee and subcommittee leaders exercise influence over both the operations of their committees and the final output of Congress.

Congress and Judicial Branch The committee chairs are usually awarded on the basis

of seniority. The member of the majority party who has the longest continuous service on the committee ordinarily becomes its head.

If a bill is passed by a house, it goes to another, where the process of investigations and debating is repeated.

If there are differences between the bills as passed by the House and the Senate, the two versions must go to a conference committee for reconciliation.

In any event, both houses must pass the bill in the same final version. Then the bill is sent to President.

If the President vetoes it, but both houses pass it again by two-thirds majorities, it becomes law.


In the legislative process, interest groups hold much influence in obtaining or preventing the enactment of new laws.

Many organized interest groups maintain paid lobbyists at both state and national capitals, where they can watch and help direct the legislative as well as the administrative process.

In America, lobbying is part of the citizen's right to petition the government.

In Congress, lobbyists work closely with the professional staff of senators, representatives, and the standing committees. They find Congressional staff members glad to grant access to themselves and, indirectly, to members of Congress, in return for information, speech writing, research work, and even support on legislation.


Today, there are thousands of lobbyists in Washington D. C. who are active in persuading Congressmen to vote for or against a policy. They hold great influence in shaping America's policies. So some people call the lobbyists "third house" of Congress.


The Constitution provided, in Article Three, that the judicial power of the United States should be vested in one Supreme Court and in such inferior courts as the Congress should establish.

The U. S. courts are the judicial branch of the federal Government.

Today the hierarchy of national courts of general jurisdiction consists of one Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and district courts.


The Supreme Court is the highest court of the United States.

It now has one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices.

Decisions are made by the majority, with each justice having one vote. Currently six justices constitute a quorum. In the event of a tie vote, the decision of the lower court is sustained, although the case may be reargued.

All the justices of the Supreme Court are appointed for life terms by the President with the consent of the Senate. They can only be removed by impeachment.


Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and cases in which a state is a party.

In all other cases coming within the judicial power of the U. S., the Supreme Court's Jurisdiction is only appellate.

The highest authority of the Supreme Court is its power to interpret the U. S. Constitution.

It has the power to examine the bills passed "by Congress and important decisions made by the president.

It has the power to declare them unconstitutional and so put an end to their enforcement. John Marshall, the most famous chief justice in American history, once called this Supreme Court's power of interpretation the judicial review.

Someone once put it tersely "the Supreme Court is the Constitution".


The courts of appeals have been set up to share the burden on the Supreme Court, but they are under the Supreme Court.

The United States is divided into 12 judicial circuits, one of which is the District of Columbia.

Each has a court of appeals consisting of from six to twenty-eight permanent judgeships.

Each court of appeals normally hears cases in panels of three but for especially important and controversial cases all judges may be present.

Circuit judges are appointed for life by the president with the consent of the Senate.

The United States’ courts of appeals have only appellate jurisdiction. They review decisions of the district courts within the circuits and also some of the actions of the independent regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission. These courts are powerful policy makers. Less than one percent of the cases from these courts are looked at carefully by the Supreme Court.


District courts are trial courts of original jurisdiction. They are the only federal courts that regularly employ grand and petit juries.

Each district court is composed of at least one judge, but it may have as many as twenty-seven.

District judges normally sit separately and hold court by themselves. There are presently eighty-nine district judges in the fifty states, plus one in the District of Columbia and one in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.


All district judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. District judges hold office for life.

To the district courts come tens of thousands of cases annually -- cases of crime against the United States, civil cases in which the United States is a party, cases involving copyrights, patent rights, trademarks, the revenue laws, bankruptcy, and so on.


The federal government "also has several specialized trial courts to hear special questions. This kind of courts is designed to speed the hearing of important constitutional questions; direct routs of appeal to the Supreme Court are available after their decisions.


In addition to this complex structure of federal courts, each state maintains a complete judicial system of its own.

The two court systems are related, but they do not exist in a superior-inferior relationship.

The Supreme Court is the only federal court that may review state court decisions. And it may do so only under special conditions.

State courts have sole jurisdiction to try all cases not within the judicial power the Constitution grants to the United States. Such cases concerning ordinary crimes as theft, murder, and disputes between residents of the same state, come within the jurisdiction of the state.

State judges are appointed or elected by the state. They are responsible to the state law, not to the Supreme Court

A Survey of USA: ----- Congress and Judicial Branch Prof. Niangen Huang.

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