The legislative branch in the US creates and passes laws at both federal and state levels. The upper house is the Senate, with each senator representing a senatorial district. States send two senators to the US Senate, while the House of Representatives is based on population. Most states have a bicameral legislative branch, with the size of the senate varying. Prior to 1964, senatorial districts were based on arbitrary factors, but the Supreme Court ruled that they must be based on population distribution.
In the United States (USA), the legislative branch of government is responsible for creating and passing laws that represent the interests of the people. At both the federal and state levels, this legislative branch typically takes a bicameral or bicameral form. The upper house is known as the senate. Each senator represents a senatorial district, or region, and is elected by the people who live in that region. While senatorial districts at the federal level are based simply on state lines, a senatorial district within a single state must be calculated based on population distribution rather than geographic lines.
Each U.S. state is permitted to send two Senators to the U.S. Senate, regardless of the state’s size or population. In this case, the senatorial district encompasses the entire state and is unaffected by population distribution. Members of the other legislative branch, the United States House of Representatives, are elected by the citizens of their congressional district. These districts are determined based on the population within the state, and the number of representatives varies based on the relative state population. This means that each state has only one senatorial district, but can have dozens of congressional districts.
Forty-nine of the states also have a state-level bicameral legislative branch, consisting of both a state house and a state senate. Nebraska has only one branch, known as the Senate. The senate within each state can range in size from fewer than 20 members to more than 60, depending on that state’s laws. Unlike federal senators, who have six-year terms, state senators have terms of two to four years.
Prior to 1964, states established their senatorial districts based on arbitrary factors, such as county lines. In the early 1960s, the United States Supreme Court heard a number of lawsuits relating to the criteria for determining the senatorial district in Alabama. Those filing the lawsuits argued that suburban voters were overrepresented, while urban voters were underrepresented within a state senate because of the way senatorial districts were determined.
In the landmark 1964 case of Reynolds V. Sims, the court ruled that each state must establish senatorial districts based on population distribution, not county lines. The justices wrote in their decision that elected leaders must represent people, not land areas. This had a profound effect on state governments and led to major changes in how districting and representation were determined within each state.
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