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Legislative is a word that means “able to pass laws.” That is exactly what the legislative branch of our government does—it passes laws. In order to do this, first the law must be written down. Second, people have to vote in favor of it. A law passed in this way is called a statute.
For example, your state probably has a statute that says only police officers can bring a gun to a school. The reason that law exists is because your state legislature passed it—they wrote the law down and voted in favor of it. Once the statute passes, it can be enforced. That means that if you bring a gun to school, you can be arrested and charged with a crime.
Congress
The legislative branch of our government is made up of two groups of people, or “chambers”.
• One chamber is called the Senate.
• The other chamber is called the House of Representatives.
Together, these two chambers are called Congress. Because there are two chambers in Congress, we say that Congress is bicameral, which just means it is divided in two.
In order to be part of Congress, a person has to be elected. Each state elects two people to be part of the Senate. Since there are 50 states, there are 100 people in the Senate. A person who is part of the Senate is called a Senator.
A person who is part of the House of Representatives is called a Representative. The number of Representatives each state gets to elect depends on how many people live in that state. The more people a state has, the more Representatives it gets. Right now, there are a total of 435 Representatives in the House.
All Senators and Representatives are called legislators because they are people who pass laws. The entire Congress is sometimes called the legislature, which just means a group of people who pass laws.
How Congress makes statutes
Ideas for statutes come from many places. Usually a Senator or Representative will get an idea for a law, but sometimes these ideas will come from a citizen or someone in the executive branch of our government. The idea has to be written down and either a Senator or Representative must introduce the idea to Congress.
When an idea for a law is written down, it is called a bill. When a Senator or Representative introduces a bill, someone reads the text of the bill out loud. Afterward, the members of Congress debate whether the bill should become a law. This debating process can take months or even years. Finally, members of Congress will vote to decide whether the bill will become law. If they vote in favor of the bill, it still can’t become law until the President approves it. The President can either sign the bill to approve it or veto the bill to reject it.
Congress can override the President’s veto by voting again. If two-thirds of the members of Congress vote for the bill, then it will become law even if the President doesn’t like it. If less than two-thirds of Congress vote for the bill after a veto, then the bill does not become law. Members of Congress may discuss the bill again and try to work out a compromise that the President would approve.
Once a bill is finally passed into law and signed by the President, it becomes a statute—a written law that joins the zillions of other written laws as part of our code, or set of laws. For more information about the lawmaking process, visit the House of Representatives’ legislative process guide.
This process works pretty much the same way in state governments. Most states have a Senate and a House of Representatives. (The one exception is Nebraska, which only has a Senate and thus is unicameral.) Instead of a President, states have a Governor. After the state’s Senate and House of Representatives vote to pass a bill, the state Governor can either sign or veto the bill.
Unconstitutional statutes
Article I of the U.S. Constitution has a specific list of subjects Congress is allowed to write statutes about. If something is not on the list, then Congress can’t make laws about it. For example, taxes are on the list, so Congress can write statutes about collecting taxes.
Congress also can’t write any statutes that go against any other part of the Constitution. For example, Congress can’t pass a statute that violates someone’s right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
If Congress does pass a law that goes against the Constitution, that law is unconstitutional. Courts will identify unconstitutional laws.
State governments also can’t pass unconstitutional laws. But state governments have something else to worry about, too: the state constitution. Every state has its own constitution that is similar to the U.S. Constitution, and state laws cannot violate the state constitution either.