Concept
Upper house
Overview
An upper house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house. The house formally designated as the upper house is usually smaller and often has more restricted power than the lower house. A legislature composed of only one house (and which therefore has neither an upper house nor a lower house) is described as unicameral.
In countries where English is widely used, the most common name for the upper house of a national legislature is the Senate, including in the United States, Nigeria, the Philippines, Kenya, Canada, and Australia, among others.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
This combination of circumstances exemplifies itself in another American institution, the Senate of the United States. That assembly, the Upper House, as it were, of Congress, is considered to represent not the people directly, but the States as such, and to be the guardian of that portion of their sovereign rights which they have not alienated. As the internal sovereignty of each state is, by the nature of an equal…
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
Names Upper house.
In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility.
Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Close in meaning to Upper house; the term itself is not named.
Similarly Archbishops and Bishops, as such, had temporal authority, just as they have still in England a seat and voice in the Upper House; Protestant rulers are, as such, heads of their churches; in England a few years ago this was a girl of eighteen. By the revolt from the Pope, the Reformation shattered the European structure, and, in particular, dissolved the true unity of Germany by abolishing its common faith…
Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays of Schopenhauer
Opens on Upper house; names Upper house.
Philosophers who discussed Upper house
Related ideas
- Turkey
- Germany
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Iran
- Ireland
- Netherlands
- Rajya Sabha
- United States Senate
- Switzerland
- Austria
- Sudan
- United Kingdom
- Venezuela
- United States
- Tyranny of the majority
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Canada
- Sweden
- Lower house
- Denmark
- Quebec
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.