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The Texas Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Texas. It is a bicameral body composed of a 31-member Senate and a 150-member House of Representatives . The state legislature meets at the Capitol in Austin .
In the United States, the government of each of the 50 states is structured in accordance with its individual constitution. In turn, each state constitution must be grounded in republican principles. Article IV, Section 4, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution tasks the federal government with assuring that each state's government is so ...
The Texas Senate is the upper house of the Texas Legislature, with the Texas House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, they compose the state legislature of the state of Texas . There are 31 members of the Senate, representing single-member districts across the U.S. state of Texas , with populations of approximately 940,000 per ...
The Speaker of the House presides over the House, and the Lieutenant Governor presides over the Senate. It is a powerful arm of the Texas government not only because of its power of the purse to control and direct the activities of state government and the strong constitutional connections between it and the Lieutenant Governor, but also due to ...
Generally, the same system of checks and balances that exists at the federal level also exists between the state legislature, the state executive officer (governor) and the state judiciary. In 27 states, the legislature is called the legislature or the state legislature, while in 19 states the legislature is called the general assembly.
Until 1964, state senators were generally elected from districts that were not necessarily equal in population. In some cases state senate districts were based partly on county lines. In the vast majority of states, the Senate districts provided proportionately greater representation to rural areas. However, in the 1964 decision Reynolds v.
The 19th-century culture of the state was heavily influenced by the plantation culture of the Old South, dependent on African-American slaves, as well as the patron system once prevalent (and still somewhat present) in northern Mexico and South Texas. In these societies, the government's primary role was seen as being the preservation of social ...
A senator had to be thirty or older, a citizen of the republic, and a resident of his district for one year. Senators were elected to three year terms, with one-third of the members being elected each year. The Vice President presided over the Senate, "but shall not vote on any question, unless the senate be equally divided."