Great Government for Kids

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The Legislative Branch

The Legislative branch would be the law-making branch. The legislators would be elected by the people of the state they represented. This branch is divided into two parts called the Senate and the House of Representatives. All the lawmakers are called the Congress. Today they meet in a building in Washington, D.C. called the Capitol.

The Founding Fathers finally solved the problem of how to be fair to both the big states and the small states by coming to what is called “The Great Compromise”.

In the Senate, each state is represented by 2 Senators, and each has an equal vote when making or approving the new laws.

In the House of Representatives, each state has a number of Representatives depending upon how many people live in the state. So a state with many people, like New York or California, would have many Representatives, and a state with a small number of people, like Rhode Island, would have only a few Representatives.

Any laws that are made must be approved by both parts of the Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives.