To do 2 min read. Advantages of Bicameral Legislature Bicameral legislatures make it possible for better laws to be made in the country, since bills are somewhat properly debated in bicameral legislature.
It is difficult for the executive arms to dominate the two chambers. The second chamber of bicameral legislature reduces the work load of the upper house. Bicameral legislature makes room for equal and adequate representation of the people in a federal state. The second chamber of s bicameral legislature checks and prevents hasty and ill-considered passage of bills unlike in the case of a unicameral legislature. The second chamber of a bicameral legislature corrects any faulty legislation coming from the first chamber.
Bicameral legislatures protects the interests of minority groups. A bicameral legislature makes it possible for public opinion to be properly expressed on the issues concerned before bills are passed by delaying the bills in the two chambers. Bicameral legislatures result in division of labour in certain aspects of the functions performed by the legislature between the two legislative chambers.
Bicameral legislatures create room for more politically and administratively experienced people to be useful in the art of law making. The second chamber of bicameral legislature checks the excesses and guides against the tyranny or dictatorship of a one chamber. Disadvantages of Bicameral Legislature The second chamber of bicameral legislature may used as a dumping ground for political rejects at the polls, if its membership is by nomination or appointment.
A bicameral legislature encourages duplication of functions, since they perform the same function. Bicameral legislatures waste a lot of public fund because the government will try to maintain the two legislative chambers and the paraphernalia that go with it.
A bicameral legislature is not good for passing bills in times of emergency because of delays that result from having two chambers. Many legislators have to go through the bills before they are passed or carried out. Bicameral legislatures lead to unnecessary rivalry as to which of the two houses is superior to the other. In a bicameral legislature, most of the members assigned in the second chamber have advanced in age and are mostly inactive.
Appointment rather than election of members of the upper house as it is done in Britain is undemocratic. This is another disadvantage of a bicameral legislature. Bicameral legislatures cause a serious delay in the act of law making.
The proposal to adopt a bicameral legislature in Pennsylvania spurred a great deal of debate. The controversy in Pennsylvania prompted James Wilson to develop a new theoretical justification for republican bicameralism, that is, when both chambers represented the same people. Up to that point justifications for bicameralism hinged on reserving the second chamber for legislators selected on a different basis than the first chamber. Second chambers, in turn, reflected different interests or subpopulations.
For example, the aristocracy in Great Britain, and state governments in the U. As Gordon Wood and Marc Kruman point out, constitutional designers at the state level as often as not dismissed the British model, not least because U. Most states republicanized both legislative chambers in that they did not reserve second chambers to represent geography rather than population.
It is worth recalling that arguments concerning state sovereignty justified representation of states in the U. Geographical subunits of states, however, never enjoyed similar standing. Bentham believed that Americans adopted the bicameral legislature out of blind traditionalism. But he also believed that bicameralism created unnecessary redundancy. Bentham ignored that legislatures aggregate information as well as aggregate preferences.
James Wilson argued that two bicameral chambers, both fully republicanized and representing the same constituency, can, in circumstances, aggregate information better than a single chamber. Further, contrary to Bentham, taking the same set of legislators, and acoustically separating them in different chambers, can stimulate legislative innovation rather than suppress it. Business firms often set up two or more teams to work on the same problem or innovation.
The expectation is that acoustically separated groups will generate different initial insights, then develop different ideas for comparison. This often improves the results that would emerge if they all collaborated as one group. Bentham could not conceive of bicameralism outside of the British experience, so he misdiagnosed American bicameralism for the ills of British bicameralism.
His captive imagination blinded him from seeing that Americans refounded their bicameral institutions on fully republican grounds for fully republican purposes. May 2, Ralph Rossum. Nov 7,
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