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Monday, June 22, 2020

US Legislature: Senate and House of Representative

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Aditi Mohta
Aditi Mohta
North America

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Article Contributor(s)

Aditi Mohta

Article Title

US Legislature: Senate and House of Representative

Publisher

Global Views 360

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

URL

The US Capitol, Washington

The US Capitol, Washington | Source: Gryffindor via Wikimedia

US Congress

Congress of the United States, the legislature of the United States of America is established under the Constitution of 1789. It is structurally separate from the executive and judicial branches of the government. The United States Senate is the upper House of the United States Congress, and the House of Representatives is the lower House of the United States Congress. Together, both these houses make up the legislature of the United States. Although the two chambers are separate for the most part, the House and Senate are equal partners in the legislative process, and the legislation cannot be acted without the consent of both chambers. Congress must assemble at least once in a year and must agree on the date of convening and adjourning. The decided time for convening, according to the Twentieth Amendment, is January 3. The House and the Senate vote the date for adjournment. Congress must also come together in a joint session to count the electoral votes for the President and the Vice President. 

United States Senate 

The United States Senate, the upper House of the United States Congress, was established in 1789 under the Constitution. Each state elects two senators for six years. One-third of the Senate membership expires every two years. It is hence also nicknamed as “the house that never dies”. The role of the Senate is to provide equal representation to each state regardless of their size and population. Washington, D.C. houses the chamber of the United States Senate. Election to the Senate was indirect up till 1913 and changed to direct election by the Seventeenth Amendment. The Senate shares responsibility with the House of Representatives for law-making within the United States of America. 

The Senate has exclusive powers which are not granted to the House of Representative. The powers include the authority to consent to treaties before giving it for consent, confirming the appointment of -- Cabinet secretaries, federal judges and executives, military officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, and other federal uniformed officers. The Senate is also responsible for trying federal officials that have been impeached by the House.

The qualifications for Senators are as follows:

  1. They must be at least 30 years old. 
  2. They must have the citizenship of the United States of America for at least nine years.
  3. They must be an inhabitant of the state they are representing. 

House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is the lower House of the United States Congress which was established in 1789 by the Constitution of the United States. It shares equal responsibilities of law-making with the Senate. The House is designed to give a voice to people of every local voting region of America. Members of the House stand for reelection every two years. Each state is split into districts and each district votes for one representative. The number of districts depends on the population of each state. The candidate with the most number of votes wins the seat in the House, and the party with the most number of seats takes control.

The primary responsibility of the House is to pass federal legislation that affects the whole country. For the bill to become a law the Senate has to agree and the United States President has to finally sign it. The House, like the Senate, has special powers too. These include the power to initiate revenue bills, to impeach officials, and to elect the President in case there is no majority in the Electoral College.

The House is organised in the committee system, under which the membership is divided into specialised committees like committees for holding hearings, preparing bills for the consideration of the entire House, and regulating the House procedure. The member of the majority party chairs these committees. Almost all bills are first referred to the respective committee. There are approximately 20 permanent committees, each having subcommittees. 

The qualifications for members of the House are:

  1. They must be at least 25 years of age.
  2. They must be a U.S. citizen for at least seven years. 
  3. They do not need to reside in the constituency that he represents.

Articles that were referred to:

  1. https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-legislative-branch/#:~:text=The%20Senate%20maintains%20several%20powers,confirmation%20of%20the%20Vice%20President.
  2. https://www.britannica.com/topic/House-of-Representatives-United-States-government
  3. https://www.congress.gov/help/learn-about-the-legislative-process/how-our-laws-are-made
  4. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/chapter/the-nature-and-function-of-congress/

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February 4, 2021 4:57 PM

India’s Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act: Why the activists are opposing it?

On July 13, 2020 the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment of India notified the release of draft Rules for the much-disputed Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act 2019, and has given citizens 30 days to submit suggestions and objections.

The Ministry first published the draft Rules on April 18, 2020 and asked for comments by April 30, later extended to May 18. Based on the central government’s consideration of the submitted feedback, the updated Rules were once again opened to critique.

As summarised in this analysis by PRS Legislative Research, the Rules lay out the detailed process regarding issuance of Certificate of Identity, and welfare measures, medical facilities and such for transgender people. It also specifies that the National Institute of Social Defence will act as secretariat for the National Council for Transgender Persons.

Analysis

  1. The Act is infamous for claiming to confer the right to self-perceived gender identity, which is also enshrined in the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) vs. Union of India judgement, but continuously neglecting this right thereby going against both a Supreme Court judgement and its own statement.
  2. This manifested once again in Rule 4 of the first draft of Rules which required a psychologist’s report— while paradoxically insisting that it requires “no medical examination”— as part of the application process. This requirement was removed from the recent draft of the Rules after backlash.
  3. Also, as stated in the Act, it is the District Magistrate who will determine the final “correctness” of the application, essentially stripping transgender people of any supposed right to self determination. It is worth noting that this places the District Magistrate, an executive figure, in a judicial position, one of ‘judging’ the ‘authenticity’ of a person’s gender identity.
  4. The above mentioned application will only provide a Certificate of Identity that states a person’s gender identity as transgender. To be able to apply for a revised Certificate of Identity to change one’s gender to male/female as per Rule 6, a person must undergo gender reassignment surgery and on top of that provide a certificate stating this from the Medical Superintendent or Chief Medical Officer from the medical institution which facilitates the surgery.
  5. This is problematic for a large multitude of reasons, including but not limited to: many transgender people not feeling the need for medical or surgical intervention, the policing of transgender people’s identity as only being ‘valid’ if they undergo surgery, and the sky-high costs of surgery contrasted with large numbers of transgender people living in unsupportive environments and/or being unable to finance their surgery.
  6. The right to self-identification continues to be blatantly violated in Rule 8, under which a District Magistrate can reject an application, following which the applicant has a right to appeal the rejection only within 60 days of intimation of the same, as stated in Rule 9.
  7. The right to self-determination was also thrown out the window when the first draft Rules imposed a penalty on “false” applications, once again referring to the arbitrary power of the District Magistrate. This has also been removed following strongly negative reactions.

It is important to compare the two versions of the Rules despite the second one being arguably better and cognizant of some of the demands made by the citizens and other stakeholders.

The first version of the Rules quite clearly depicted the narrowly cisnormative perspective through which transgender lives are seen by the people in power. Despite the many changes as a result of relentless protests, the Act is nowhere near to truly respecting and empowering transgender people.

The decision to give the final say to the District Magistrate- which some argue made the process harder than it used to be before the Act- and the refusal to provide affirmative action or reservations to ensure representation in positions of authority that transgender people have historically been denied access to.

It also does little to counter discrimination, as is seen most clearly in the punishment of sexual assault and rape being much less than for the rape of a cisgender woman. It advocates for plenty of measures but does pitifully little to ensure or enable these changes.  

History of the Act

The history of the Act is a turbulent one. The 2016 Transgender (Protection of Rights) Bill, was almost immediately slammed by activists, NGOs, other human rights organisations, and citizens, for multiple reasons.

The most derided was the provision to set up a ‘District Screening Committee’ which included the District Magistrate, a chief medical officer and a psychiatrist among others, for the sole purpose of scrutinising a transgender person’s body and identity. It also criminalised organised begging, an activity specifically common among the Hijra community.

The Lower House of the Parliament, the Lok Sabha, rejected all the proposed changes by the parliamentary standing committee along with the demands of the transgender community, and passed the bill with some amendments in 2018. A short-lived victory came in the form of the lapse of the bill due to the 2019 general elections.

However, as soon as the NDA government was re-elected, the bill was reintroduced in the Parliament with some more changes, particularly the removal of the section on District Screening Committees, but was still unsatisfactory.

The full text of this bill was not released when it was approved by the Union Cabinet on July 10, 2019, but on the morning that it was tabled in the Lok Sabha, garnering another consecutive year of protest since it was first introduced.

This is the bill as it exists today, having been passed by the Lok Sabha on August 5, 2019. When the motion to refer it to a select committee failed in the Rajya Sabha, it was passed on November 26, 2019, and received presidential assent on December 5, 2019. Recent developments include a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the validity of the Act.

Despite it becoming the law of the land, transgender citizens and activists such as Esvi Anbu Kothazam and Kanmani Ray continue to criticse it and the insidious transphobic thinking that has always guided it.

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