Get complete information on the role and functions of Legislature

Legislature is a type of representative deliberative assembly with the power to create and change laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. Legislatures are known by many names, the most common being parliament and congress, although these terms also have more specific meanings.

The main job of the legislature is to make and amend laws. In parliamentary systems of government, the legislature is formally supreme and appoints the executive. In presidential systems of government, the legislature is considered a power branch which is equal to and independent of the executive. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise taxes and adopt the budget and other money bills.

The primary components of a legislature are one or more chambers or houses’, assemblies that debate and vote upon bills. A legislature with only one house is called unicameral. A bicameral legislature possesses two separate chambers, usually described as an upper house and a lower house, which often differ in duties, powers, and the methods used for the selection of members.

Much rarer have been trilateral legislatures; the most recent existed in the waning years of white- minority rule in South Africa. In most parliamentary systems, the lower house is the more powerful house while the upper house is merely a chamber of advice or review.

However, in presidential systems, the powers of the two houses are often similar or equal. In federations, it is typical for the upper house to represent the component states; the same applies to the supranational legislature of the European Union.

For this purpose, the upper house may either contain the delegates of state governments, as is the case in the European Union and in Germany and was the case in the United States before 1913, or be elected according to a formula that grants equal representation to states with smaller populations, as is the case in Australia and the modern United States.

Because members of legislatures usually sit together in a specific room to deliberate, seats in that room may be assigned exclusively to members of the legislature. In parliamentary language, the term seat is sometimes used to mean that someone is a member of a legislature.

For example, saying that a legislature has 100 “seats” means that there are 100 members of the legislature, and saying that someone is “contesting a seat” means they are trying to get elected as a member of the legislature. By extension, the term seat is often used in less formal contexts to refer to an electoral district itself, as for example in the phrases “safe seat” and “marginal seat.

Representation of People

In modern states, direct democracy, as it functioned in Greek city-states, is impossible. Therefore, people in a democracy elect their own representatives to perform the tasks of the government. Representation is actually, “the process through which the attitudes, preferences, viewpoints and desires of the entire citizenry or a part of them are, with their expressed approval, shaped into governmental action on their behalf by a smaller number among them, with binding effect up those represented.”

The legislatures are supposed to reflect public opinion. Elections are held periodically in order to register changes. Devices like reservation seats or functional representation are also adopted for certain sections of the population who do not get fair representation. For example, in India, seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes Tribes in the legislatures well as in the bureaucracy.

In a parliamentary democracy, the executive is elected by the people and it is the legislature which claims to represent the sovereign will of tile people. Even in non-democratic states, the executive seeks to rely on a body of people who, it thinks, can express popular wishes.

Function is legislature

The place and significance of the rule-making bodies, from a functional point of view, varies from the ‘sovereign’ English Parliament to the non-sovereign Supreme Soviet of the erstwhile USSR, or from the ‘powerful’ American Congress to the ‘powerless’ Cortes of Spain – a body ‘ supinely acquiescing in the will of the ruler’. While taking a synthesized view of the functions of legislative bodies, Curtis enumerates them in the following manner:

1) Legislatures choose the head of the state: they may also remove him by the process of impeachment, or they can change the law of his succession or election. For instance, the British Parliament can change the law of primogeniture or the method of abdication. The parliaments of India and Israel elect the president of the Republic, the House of Representatives of the United States has the right to elect a President in case no candidate gets absolute majority in the Presidential poll.

The legislatures of the U. S. and India can also remove their Presidents by the process of impeachment. The parliaments of Canada, New Zealand and Australia recommend three names to the English Sovereign and one of them is nominated by him/her to act as the Governor-General of the country.

2) The Legislatures also approve the choice of the Prime Minister and his ministers in some countries. All ministerial nominations by the President in the U. S. have to be ratified by the Senate. The list of ministers comprising the cabinet has to be approved by the Knesset in Israel. The Federal Assembly of Switzerland elects its seven presidents of the Federal Council. The nomination of the Prime Minister made by the King must be approved by the Diet in Japan.

The Prime Minister nominated by the President in France has to seek a vote of confidence in the parliament. In countries having a cabinet form of government like Britain and India, the ministers can remain in office only as long as they enjoy the confidence of the legislature. Recently, the Vajpayee government lost a confidence motion in the legislature. In a theoretical sense, this provision also applies to countries like Russia and China.

3) Legislatures may also influence or control government behaviour or seek to – make the executives accountable to them. Votes of no-confidence, censure motions, interpellation procedures. Debates on budgets and major policies of the government, process of impeachment, etc. are the various devices in the hands of the legislators to exercise their control over the government.

The American Congress took up impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton in 1998. The exit of the British Prime Minister Attlee in 1949. Eden in 1956 and Macmillan in 1968 confirm the fact that the parliament possesses the controlling authority. Thus, the legislatures also perform certain judicial functions. In India, they have the power to impeach the President as well as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and so on.

4) Legislators choose their office-bearers and they can also remove them. They can also disqualify their members on the charge of proved ‘misbehaviour’ of committing an act of corruption or treason or breach of privileges. Speakers and Deputy Speakers are elected by the rule-making bodies and they may remove them by a vote of no-confidence.

5) The most important function of the legislatures is to make rules, because they are the rule-making departments of the government. The bills are moved given three readings. Often the bills are referred to the committees of the parliament for more detailed scrutiny. In a communist county, as in China, it is not the legislature as such but its small committee that first adopts a bill at the invisible behest of the party in power, and it is adopted by the legislature subsequently.

Also, the ordinance issued by the head of the state when the parliament is not in session has to be ratified by the legislature within a period of six weeks from the date of commencement of the session. 1) A Legislature often holds the purse strings. Its approval is necessary for the annual budget or for the imposition of taxes. Through committees, they also scrutinize the expenditure of the government. In India, this is done by Public Accounts Committee. (PAC)

The legislatures also reduce ‘tensions’. Provide reassurance and generally enhance satisfaction with the policies and programmes of the government. They also provide scope for the articulation of interests. They perform ‘exit function’, meaning thereby that when the political system seems to have reached an impasse and the normal decision-making process seems incapable of providing a way out of the situation the elites sometimes turn to the legislatures’ for either the substance or the form, or both of a decision which will take the system out of the impasse.

They also serve as a training ground for the future leadership of the country. Besides, they strengthen ‘consensual institutional continuity’, and they often constitute the only means of administrative overview available in the country

It is these functions that enable the rule-making bodies of the developing countries to play their significant role. However, Packenhan also refers to the obstructionist role of the legislatures. They “tend to represent all over the world more conservative and parochial interests than executives, even in democratic politics.

This seems specially to be the case in presidential as contrasted with the parliamentary political system. In societies that need and want change and where political modernization may be defined as the will and capacity to cope with and generate continuing transformation it may not make much sense to strengthen the decision-making power of an institution that is likely to resist change.”

Legislative bodies all over the world make use of the committee system for the sake of efficiency of work and economy of time. In actual practice, the legislative body is known by the committee it keeps. As more suggests: No legislature can function effectively without the aid of some committee. Discussion of details is impossible at a large meeting which is too unwieldy to debate anything but broad principles. For this reason all democratic legislatures elect smaller groups to discuss matters in detail and these bring the result of their discussion back to the larger body for decisions.

Decline of legislature

Is the filibuster making the legislative process meaningless? During floor debate on a piece of legislation on Monday, Senator Matt Bartle of Lee’s Summit commented that it is very hard to get much of importance through the General Assembly these days because lawmakers either vote in favor of something or they filibuster the legislation and prevent the majority from having the up or down vote.

Bartle told the chamber that this inability of elected officials to get anything done has led to more and more instances of people taking the direct route to get things done – through initiative petitions. Bartle says more and more of the decision-making is moving to the initiative petition process by­passing the Legislature … which he sees becoming less and less of a factor in government.

A very critical examination of the functions and powers of the legislatures, confirms that the old distrust of the executives’ has been replaced by a new confidence in their leadership. The strong position of the Cabinet working under the leadership of the Prime Minister in a parliamentary form of government, confirms the doctrine of Ramsay Muir that the emergence of a powerful cabinet has, to a remarkable extent, diminished the power and position of the Parliament, robbed its proceedings of significance, and made it appear that the Parliament exists mainly for the purpose of criticizing the omnipotent Cabinet.

The cabinet has emerged as the main forum where the policies are discussed and finalized, while the parliament merely discusses them, more or less as a formality, and is in no position to alter them if the cabinet enjoys absolute majority in the parliament.

It is the Cabinet that has the final say in a parliamentary form of government. This is applicable to all the legislatures based on the English model. The American Congress has lost much of its legislative autonomy because of the Presidential check on one hand and, the power of judicial review on the other. The legislatures of communist countries do not have even that truncated area of authority: rather they are used as an agency for propaganda purposes. They are “a rubber stamp for decisions made elsewhere in the Russian political system.”

The charge of the decline of the legislature draws support from the following points. Firstly, the area of authority which originally belonged to the legislatures has been usurped by the executives. It is the Cabinet that decides about many things like summoning and proroguing the session of the Parliament, writing the text of the inaugural address to be delivered by the Head of State, preparing a daily time-table of the session of the House and doing a host of other things that constitute the stock of parliamentary business.

In a country like the U. S., though the legislature remains separated from the executive, the President vetoes the bill passed by the Congress as per his judgement. He can also send ‘messages’ to the Congress and through his ‘friends’ get certain kind of bills passed. In country like France where we find a mixture of the parliamentary and presidential forms, the President may even go to the extent of dissolving the legislature.

Secondly, the power of the courts to look into the constitutional validity of a legislative measure has affected the authority of the legislatures. Though this factor does not apply to Britain, it applies to the United States where the federal judiciary has been given the power of judicial review, under which it can declare a law ‘ultra vires’ in case it finds that it is not consistent with, or it violates, the constitution of the country.

Lastly, what has really led to the attenuation of the authority of the modern legislatures is the role of party politics. The top leaders of the party keep the members under their strict control with the result that the latter have no alternative but to toe the official line.

Though the power and prestige of the legislatures is declining, they are working with varying degrees of authority. The legislature is still treasured as a formal centre and focus in every political system. Thus, it is rightly observed: “Decline is in the eye of the beholder and depends on his analytical perspectives.”