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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 10 December 2024. Bicameral legislature of the United States For the current Congress, see 118th United States Congress. For the building, see United States Capitol. This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being ...
One congressional power is oversight of other branches of the government. In the early 1970s, the Senate investigated the activities of President Richard Nixon regarding Watergate which led to the president's resignation. One of the foremost legislative functions of the Congress is the power to investigate and to oversee the executive branch.
Some political systems follows the principle of legislative supremacy, which holds that the legislature is the supreme branch of government and cannot be bound by other institutions, such as the judicial branch or a written constitution. Such a system renders the legislature more powerful.
Article I describes the Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government. Section 1 reads, "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." The article establishes the manner of election and the qualifications of members of each ...
As a practical matter, the limitation of Congress's ability to investigate only for a proper purpose ("in aid of" its legislative powers) functions as a limit on Congress's ability to investigate the private affairs of individual citizens; matters that simply demand action by another branch of government, without implicating an issue of public ...
Since the American Civil War, the powers of the federal government have generally expanded greatly, although there have been periods since that time of legislative branch dominance (e.g., the decades immediately following the Civil War) or when states' rights proponents have succeeded in limiting federal power through legislative action ...
Strict constructionists interpret the clause to mean that Congress may make a law only if the inability to do so would cripple its ability to apply one of its enumerated powers. Loose constructionists , on the other hand, believe it is largely up to Congress and not the courts to determine what means are "necessary and proper" in executing one ...
Hamilton countered that the bank was a reasonable means of carrying out powers related to taxation and the borrowing of funds and claimed that the clause applied to activities that were reasonably related to constitutional powers, not only those that were absolutely necessary to carry out said powers.