Texas Legislative Council: Texas Legislative Glossary.
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- bicameral: a type of legislature that is divided into two separate assemblies, chambers, or houses, known as a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism is distinguished from unicameralism, in which all members deliberate and vote as a single group.
- size of each chamber: The Texas Legislature is the state legislature of the US state of Texas. It is a bicameral body composed of a 31-member Senate and a 150-member House of Representatives.
- term length: The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Texas Legislature. It consists of 150 members who are elected from single-member districts for two-year terms. There are no term limits.
- term length: The Texas Senate is the upper house of the Texas Legislature . . . There are no term limits. Terms are four years in length, with one two-year term each decade. Senators are divided into two groups based in part on the intervening Census
- regular session: The Legislature of the State of Texas, operating under the biennial system, convenes its regular sessions at noon on the second Tuesday in January of odd-numbered years. The maximum duration of a regular session is 140 days. The governor is given authority under the state constitution to convene the legislature at other times during the biennium. Such sessions are known as called or special sessions and are reserved for legislation that the governor deems critically important in the conduct of state affairs. Called sessions are limited to a period of 30 days, during which the legislature is permitted to pass laws only on subjects submitted by the governor in calling for the session.
- governors’ power: Signing or vetoing bills passed by the Legislature.
Convening special sessions of the Legislature for specific purposes.
Delivering a report on the condition of the state to the Legislature at the beginning of each regular session.
Estimating of the amounts of money required to be raised by taxation.
Accounting for all public monies received and paid out by him and recommending a budget for the next two years.
- legislative immunity: State constitutions typically grant two types of immunities to legislators. One protects speech and debate. The other prevents or limits arrest during the legislative session.
- citizen legislature: a legislative chamber made up primarily of citizens who have a full-time occupation besides being a legislator.
- professional legislature: Ten American states have a full-time state legislature. A full-time state legislature is defined as a legislature that meets throughout the year. All other legislators are considered part-time because they only meet for a portion of the year.
- redistricting: Redistricting in the United States is the process of drawing electoral district boundaries.[1] For the United States House of Representatives, and state legislatures, redistricting occurs after each decennial census.
- term limits: A term limit is a legal restriction on the number of terms a person may serve in a particular elected office.
- turnover: Over the past five decades, the average 12-year turnover rate – that is, the share of seats held by different occupants between two Congresses a dozen years apart – is 69% in the House and 62% in the Senate, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of House and Senate membership rosters since the early 1970s.
- representation: the activity of making citizens "present" in public policy-making processes when political actors act in the best interest of citizens.[1][2] This definition of political representation is consistent with a wide variety of views on what representing implies and what the duties of representatives are.[3] For example, representing may imply acting on the expressed wishes of citizens, but it may alternatively imply acting according to what the representatives themselves judge is in the best interests of citizens.
- delegate: a model of a representative democracy. In this model, constituents elect their representatives as delegates for their constituency. These delegates act only as a mouthpiece for the wishes of their constituency/state and have no autonomy from the constituency only the autonomy to vote for the actual representatives of the state. This model does not provide representatives the luxury of acting in their own conscience and is bound by imperative mandate. Essentially, the representative acts as the voice of those who are (literally) not present.
- trustee: a model of a representative democracy, frequently contrasted with the delegate model of representation.[1] In this model, constituents elect their representatives as 'trustees' for their constituency. These 'trustees' have autonomy to deliberate and act as they see fit, in their own conscience even if it means going against the explicit desires of their constituents; this is also called a free mandate. By contrast, in the delegate model, the representative is expected to act strictly in accordance with the beliefs of their constituents.
- politico: The politico model came about when theorists recognized that representatives rarely consistently act as just a delegate or just a trustee when representing their constituents. It is a hybrid of the two models discussed above and involves representatives acting as delegates and trustees, depending on the issue.
- microcosm: anything regarded as a representative, miniature version of a larger complex reality
- single member districts: A single-member district is an electoral district represented by a single officeholder. It contrasts with a multi-member district, which is represented by multiple officeholders.
- multimember districts: A multi-member district is an electoral district that sends more than one officeholder to a body. By federal law, all members of the United States Congress are elected from single-member districts, and most states also elect their state legislators from single-member districts. Some states, however, utilize multi-member districts. For example, Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Washington elect all members of their lower state legislative chambers from multi-member districts. States and other jurisdictions may use multi-member districts in other contexts (e.g., for some but not all state legislative districts, for municipal districts, etc.)
- one person one vote: One-person, one-vote refers to the rule that one person’s voting power ought to be roughly equivalent to another person’s within the same state.
- gerrymandering: the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The manipulation may involve "cracking" (diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) or "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).[3] Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents. Wayne Dawkins describes it as politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.
- Legislative Redistricting Board: The Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB), composed of the lieutenant governor, speaker of the house, attorney general, comptroller, and commissioner of the general land office, was created by constitutional amendment in 1951, at least in part, to provide legislators with an incentive to redistrict after each federal decennial census. If the legislature fails to redistrict house or senate districts during the first regular session following release of the decennial census, Section 28, Article III, Texas Constitution, requires the board to meet within 90 days of the end of that regular session and, within 60 days of convening, to adopt its own house or senate plan.
- nonpartisan independent commission: A redistricting commission is a body vested with the authority to draft and implement electoral district maps. The composition of commissions varies from state to state. In general, a redistricting commission can take one of two forms: a non-politician commission, whose members cannot hold political office, and a politician commission, whose members can hold office. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, ruling 5-4 that redistricting commissions do not violate the United States Constitution.
- bipartisan independent commission: Bipartisan means a substantial majority of the commission's membership is reserved for members of the two major U.S. political parties.
- lieutenant governor: the second-highest executive office in the government of Texas, a state in the U.S. It is the second most powerful post in Texas government because its occupant controls the work of the Texas Senate and controls the budgeting process as a leader of the Legislative Budget Board.
- president pro-tempore: a largely honorary position, and is third in the line for the governorship of Texas. If the governor and lieutenant governor are both out of the state, the president pro tem is acting governor in their absence.
- Legislative Budget Board: a legislative service agency solely dedicated to fiscal analysis and policy to members of the Texas Legislature.
- Speaker of the House: the presiding officer of the Texas House of Representatives. The Speaker's main duties are to conduct meetings of the House, appoint committees, and enforce the Rules of the House. The current speaker is Dade Phelan, a Republican from Beaumont, who was elected Speaker on January 12, 2021.
- party legislative caucus: “Legislative Caucus” means an organization that is composed exclusively of members of the legislature, that elects or appoints officers and recognizes identified legislators as members of the organization, and that exists for research and other support of policy development and interests that the membership hold in common. The term includes an entity established by or for a legislative caucus to conduct research, education, or any other caucus activity. An organization whose only nonlegislator members are the lieutenant governor or the governor remains a “legislative caucus” for purposes of this section. ELEC. CODE § 253.0341(e).
- party caucus: a political event associated with primaries, the process by which voters in the U.S. state of Texas ultimately select their parties' nominees for various offices. The process as a whole has been referred to as the Texas Two-step, after the partner dance of the same name, because Texans were required to first vote in the primary election in order to be eligible for participation in party caucuses in which delegates were selected.
- floor leader: also known as a caucus leader, are leaders of their respective political party in a body of a legislature.
- special legislative caucus: a group of legislators who organize to advocate or influence legislation that promotes their common goals and interests.
- minority caucus: that group of Representatives from the second numerically strongest political party in the House.
- women’s caucus: The Texas Women's Political Caucus was founded in November 1971 in Austin. Many of the 200 women at the first meeting had been at the formation of the National Women's Political Caucus in Washington and at the annual conference of the National Organization for Women in California, both in the summer of 1971.
- ideological caucus: Ideological congressional caucuses can represent a political party within a political party. In the United States two-party dominant political system, these congressional caucuses help congregate and advance the ideals of a more focused ideology within the two major relatively big tent political parties. Some caucuses are organized political factions with a common ideological orientation.[3] Most ideological caucuses are confined to the House of Representatives.
- issue caucus:
- committee: a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more fully than would be possible if the assembly itself were considering them. Committees may have different functions and their types of work differ depending on the type of the organization and its needs.
A member of a legislature may be delegated a committee assignment, which gives them the right to serve on a certain committee.
- standing committee:
- substantive standing committee:
- procedural standing committee:
- amendment:
- markup:
- oversight:
- conference committee:
- select committee:
- special committee:
- Legislative Process:
- bill:
- introduce:
- fiscal note:
- resolution:
- simple resolution:
- concurrent resolution:
- joint resolution:
- calendars:
- blocking bill:
- floor debate:
- killer amendment:
- rider:
- filibuster:
- chubbing:
- quorum:
- roll call vote:
- line item veto:
- emergency clause:
