Understanding the Legislative Power of the House of Representatives

The House of Representatives must be the popular chamber of government. The reasoning behind this fact is corollary to the power with which the House is entrusted. Madison argued that the power to write laws and administer taxes on citizens is the strongest, and most dangerous power entrusted to the government. Therefore, the branch of government which possesses this legislative power automatically becomes the greatest threat to individual liberty. This fact was not lost on the American Founders, who witnessed it firsthand under the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, State legislatures routinely encroached on the executive and judicial branch’s enumerated powers, leading to the culmination of all political powers into one body.

Accordingly, the delegates of the Constitutional Convention had to engineer the legislative branch in a way that expiated these precarious encroachments of power. In the final analysis of the subject, the framers of the Constitution devised a bicameral legislature, where one house is apportioned by population, and the other is apportioned equally among the states.

Understanding the encroaching nature of legislative power, the Constitution places several powerful checks on this branch, including a direct reliance on the people, frequent elections, and concurrence of all new laws passed in the House by the Senate. Through these checks on the House of Representatives, the framers designed a legislative harness, capable of restricting the unintended encroachments of the legislative branch.
The first check which the Constitution provides against an encroaching legislative branch is the sovereignty of the people. Because the Constitution was ratified by the people of the United States rather than passed by congress, they become the source from which all political powers derive. Therefore, the legislative powers granted to the government are delegated by the people to their representatives. In Federalist No.78, Hamilton explains the significance of this concept.
“There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void…To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
Taking sovereignty away from the legislature and bestowing it upon the people was the first set of handcuffs placed upon the legislative branch.

If the people had the power to give their representatives the authority to make law, they naturally held the power to take it away. Accordingly, the Framers placed the power of making laws and taxes in the body most accountable to the people; the House of Representatives. It was no accident that the members of the House have the smallest districts and the most frequent elections of all branches of the federal government. The logic behind this was that it would encourage representatives to obey the wishes of the people, and simultaneously the people power to quickly remove any representatives negating their duty. Furthermore, the Constitution provides an additional check on the House, by making its laws dependent upon a separate legislative body: the senate. This provision in the Constitution is designed to mitigate the effects of the sudden and ever-changing passions of the people, by providing a smaller body, less dependent on the people, to serve as the stable voice of

reason.
Understanding the hazardous potential of legislative power, the founders created a harness which prevented its habitual encroachments. The House of Representatives’ direct accountability to the people, combined with their reliance upon the senate to pass laws, acts as a filter which serves to protect the American people from wanton misconduct by the legislative branch.