Concept

Legislature

Overview

A legislature (UK: , US: ) is a deliberative assembly that holds the legal authority to make law and exercise political oversight within a political entity such as a state, nation, or city. Legislatures are among the principal institutions of state, typically contrasted with the executive and judicial institutions. They may exist at different levels of governance—national, subnational (state, provincial, or regional), local, or supranational—such as the European Parliament.

In most political systems, the laws enacted by legislatures are referred to as primary legislation. Legislatures may also perform oversight, budgetary, and representative functions. Members of a legislature, called legislators, may be elected, indirectly chosen, or appointed, and legislatures may be unicameral, bicameral, or multicameral, depending on their constitutional design.

There are several types of legislatures, reflecting the different constitutional principles of power on which states are organized. These types illustrate how legislatures differ not only in structure and function, but also in their constitutional relationship to other state institutions and in the theories of sovereignty and power that underpin them. The most common types are parliaments, which operate under the fusion of powers between the executive and the legislature; congresses, which function under the separation of powers between independent branches of government—in these systems, the legislature is institutionally separate from the other branches and has limited means to influence their operations; and supreme state organs of power, found in communist states, which operated under the doctrine of unified power, centralizing Executive, Legislative, Judicial and all other state powers in a supreme state organ of power, with subordinate organs carrying out delegated functions within a constitutionally defined division of labour among state organs.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Legislature is discussed.

contravention to supply-and-demand, have rigorously seen rammed up into total abolition many a foul cellar in our Southwarks, Saint-Gileses, and dark poison-lanes; saying sternly, "Shall a Roman man dwell there?" The Legislature, at whatever cost of consequences, would have had to answer, "God forbid!"--The Legislature, even as it now is, could order all dingy Manufacturing Towns to cease from their soot and…
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII.
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I tender to the legislature of Tennessee assurances of my high respect and consideration. TO THE TWO BRANCHES OF THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS. February 14, 1807. It is with sincere pleasure that I receive, from the two branches of the legislature of Massachusetts, an address, expressive of their satisfaction with the administration of our government.
Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8
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"Indeed, the act of Parliament in question has not, as in other acts, when a duty is enjoined, directed a penalty on neglect or refusal, and a mode of recovering that penalty. It seems, therefore, to the people in America as a requisition, which they are at liberty to comply with or not, as it may suit or not suit the different circumstances of the different provinces. Pennsylvania has, therefore, voluntarily…
Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin
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The legislature established at Rome by the authority of Servius Tullius was the _comitia centuriata_, which, after the expulsion of the kings, rendered the government for some time altogether aristocratical. But the people, having numbers and force on their side, and being elated with frequent conquests and victories in their foreign wars, always prevailed when pushed to extremities, and first extorted from the…
David Hume, Hume's Political Discourses
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That if the equilibrium of the three great bodies, legislative, executive, and judiciary, could be preserved, if the legislature could be kept independent, I should never fear the result of such a government; but that I could not but be uneasy, when I saw that the executive had swallowed up the legislative branch. He said, that as to that interested spirit in the legislature, it was what could not be avoided in any…
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
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Related ideas

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Case law

Place in the tradition

Part of American philosophy.

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