Article I, Section 1:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Although the Continental Congress consisted of a unicameral house, the Framers adopted a bicameral legislature for the U.S. Government at the Constitutional Convention. In making this decision, historical and then-recent experience informed the Framers’ decision. For example, some of the ancient republics, which the Framers used as models, had two-house legislatures,1 and the Parliament of Great Britain was based in two social orders, the hereditary aristocracy represented in the House of Lords and the freeholders of the land represented in the House of Commons.2

By providing a national legislature comprised of two Houses, the Framers further reinforced the separation of powers. The Great Compromise, one of the critical decisions leading to the Convention’s successful completion, provided for a House of Representatives apportioned on population, and a Senate in which the states were equally represented. Bicameralism thus enabled a composite National and Federal Government, but it also provided for a further separation and diffusion of powers. The legislative power, the Framers recognized, should be predominant in a society dependent upon the suffrage of the people. However, it was important that legislative power be subject to checks unless transient majorities abuse their powers. Hence, the Framers provided that both Houses of Congress—their Members beholden to different constituencies—deliberate on and agree to new legislation.3

During the North Carolina Ratifying Convention, future Supreme Court Justice James Iredell articulated the importance of a bicameral legislature for diffusing factional power, stating:

Events since 1787 have altered both the separation of powers and the federalism bases of bicameralism through adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment, which resulted in the popular election of the Senate. Consequently, the differences between the House of Representatives and the Senate are less pronounced than they were at the Nation’s inception.

Footnotes

1

John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1776).

2

1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 149–151 (1765).

3

The Federalist No. 51 (James Madison). The safeguard’s assurance is built into the Presentment Clause. U.S. Const. art. I, § 7, cl. 2, 3. The structure is not often the subject of case law, but it was a foundational matter in INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 944–51 (1983).

4

4 The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 21 (Jonathan Elliott, ed., 1830) (James Iredell, North Carolina Ratifying Convention (July 25, 1788)). At the North Carolina Ratifying Convention on July 24, 1788, William R. Davie also spoke of the advantages of a bicameral legislature, stating: “In order to form some balance, the departments of government were separated, and as a necessary check, the legislative body was composed of two branches. Steadiness and wisdom are better insured when there is a second branch, to balance and check the first. The stability of the laws will be greater when the popular branch, which might be influenced by local views, or the violence of party, is checked by another, whose longer continuance in office will render them more experienced, more temperate, and more competent to decide rightly.” Id. at 12.