Parliament and Congress: A Brief Comparison of the British House of Commons and the U.S. House of Representatives

Abstract

Although the United States Congress can trace its origins to British Parliament, the two institutions have evolved in significantly different directions over the past two centuries. This report provides a brief overview of the parliamentary practices in the House of Representatives and the British House of Commons focusing on such issues as membership and qualifications, the role of the Speaker and party or Government leaders, the role of committees, floor consideration, and second chambers. In a report of this length, many nuances of procedure and many rarely used parliamentary practices or traditions, both in the House of Commons and in the House of Representatives, are necessarily omitted or treated only in a cursory manner. This report will be updated as events warrant.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 19, 2005
Accession Number
ADA465380

Entities

People

  • R. E. Petersen

Organizations

  • Library of Congress

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Commerce
  • Computer Programming
  • Congress
  • District Of Columbia
  • Elections
  • Governments
  • Homeland Security
  • House Of Representatives
  • Law
  • Minority Groups
  • National Governments
  • Scotland
  • State Law
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Political Science/ International Relations/ European Studies
  • Systems Analysis and Design