Congressional Record


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Setting Course


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How Our Laws are Made


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Official Congressional Directory


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Contains biographies of Senators, members of Congress, and the Judiciary. Also includes committee assignments, maps of Congressional districts, a directory of officials of executive agencies, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, web addresses, and other information.




Congress and U.S. Foreign Policy


Book Description

Leading scholars in the study of congress and US foreign policy address congress’s vital role in determining how and why the US chooses it's international policy agendas. They address key aspects of congressional activism, assertiveness, and acquiescence in an era of divided government and polarized politics.




A Social Theory of Congress


Book Description

What is the role that norms play in the U.S. Congress? At a time of unprecedented partisanship and high-profile breaches of legislative norms in the modern Congress, the relationship between norms and the functioning of the institution is a growing and pressing concern. Despite the importance of the topic, recent scholarship has not focused on congressional norms. Meanwhile, previous research leaves open many relevant questions about the role of norms in the Congress of the twenty-first century. A Social Theory of Congress brings norms back in to the study of Congress by defining what are legislative norms, identifying which norms currently exist in the U.S. Congress, and examining the effects that congressional norms have. This book provides a new research approach to study congressional norms through a comprehensive review of previous scholarship and a combination of interviews, survey research, and analysis of member behavior. What’s more, an innovative theoretical framework — a social theory of Congress — provides new perspectives in the study of legislatures and political behavior. The findings are striking. Norms of cooperation are surprisingly alive and well in an otherwise partisan Congress. But norms of conflict are on the rise. In addition, norms of a changing culture are affecting how members understand their role as lawmakers and in their interactions among one another. Together, these findings suggest that norms play an important role in the functioning of the legislature and as norms evolve so too does the performance of Congress in American democracy.




The Realities of Redistricting


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Allowing legislators to pick the voters that make up their districts is a fundamental conflict of interest and central concern for the popular sovereignty of American elections. In The Realities of Redistricting, Jonathan Winburn examines the extent of this potential problem by focusing on both the incentives and the constraints facing state legislators during the redistricting process. Most research on redistricting tends to examine only the outcomes produced in terms of partisan gains or losses; however, we know much less about what constrains political mapmakers during the process. We know even less about whether constraints built into the process are enough to limit the partisan manipulation of both district boundaries and electoral outcomes. From the beginning stages of redistricting to the resulting outcomes on election day, this book analyzes the constraints and incentives that state legislators face. By examining the entire process, this book investigates who holds the power in the process and improves our understanding of the conditions under which redrawing district boundaries have a significant influence on partisan politics throughout the country. Specifically, reformers, who generally argue for commissions, may find that focusing on the rules rather than the actors is a better path to improving the process. The Realities of Redistricting is an interesting and informative read for anyone concerned with one of the most contentious processes in the American system.




Insufficient Representation


Book Description

Not Enough Representation: The Disconnect between Congress and Its Citizens examines how representative the United States Congress is among different demographic groups and how representational issues affect Americans’ perception of Congress, potentially threatening its legitimacy. The opening chapter analyzes political representation from the perspective of the nature of the relationship between voters and legislators, addressing why Congress is so demographically unrepresentative. The book will then focuses on outcome—the representativeness of the legislature in terms of its members’ demographic backgrounds. Congress, simply put, is not demographically representative of the American public. There are significant gaps between Congress and the American public on the basis of race, gender, religion, wealth and generation. Since members of Congress do not adequately represent the diversity in their electorate, this suggests that Congress in turn does not make polices that advocate for the citizenry as a whole. The book first examines the nature of the relationship between citizens and legislators before analyzing demographic groups in the general population and comparing their preferences to how Congressional members of that demographic group legislate. In the process, the book ties representation to many of the hot-button issues that polarize both the American public and Congress. Congress is not descriptively representative of the U.S. population. Many groups of Americans have historically been, and continue to be, underrepresented in Congress. More than ever before, this underrepresentation is troublesome to a substantial number of Americans—and problematic for American democracy.




Congress and the Fourteenth Amendment


Book Description

The discrepancy between the fourteenth amendment’s true meaning as originally understood, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of its meaning over time, has been dramatic and unfortunate. The amendment was intended to be a constitutional rule for the promotion and protection of people’s rights, administered by the states as front-line regulators of life, liberty, and property, to be overseen by Congress and supported by federal legislation as necessary. In this book, William B. Glidden makes the case that instead, the amendment has operated as a judge-dominated, negative rights-against-government regime, supervised by the Supreme Court. Whenever Congress has enacted legislation to protect life, liberty, or property rights of people in the states, the laws were often overturned, narrowly construed, or forced to rely on the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, under the Supreme Court’s constraining interpretations. Glidden proposes that Congress must recover for itself or be restored to its proper role as the designated federal enforcement agency for the fourteenth amendment.