Fig. 1
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Government · AP US Government and Politics
Congress, the president, the courts and the bureaucracy
The Constitution gives each branch its own powers and makes each depend on the others to use them.
The figure is Congress at work: the 435 seats of the House and the 100 of the Senate, voting on a bill (the votes are hypothetical). Each member’s seat rises red for yea or turns gray for nay as the roll is called. The tally boards show the bar each vote must clear.
In the House the bill needs a majority: 232 yeas pass it. In the Senate 57 yeas are a majority too, but short of the 60 needed to end debate. A determined minority of senators can stop it.
That is the chapter in miniature: power is shared, and each institution’s rules decide what the others can do. It covers Congress (2.1–2.3), the presidency (2.4–2.7), the courts (2.8–2.11) and the bureaucracy (2.12–2.14), then how the four make policy together (2.15). This is the largest unit of the AP exam: 25–36% of the score.
two chambers, built to differ
Congress is bicameral: the Senate represents the states equally, the House represents the people.
Both rest on republicanism: the people’s will reaches government through the debates and votes of their elected representatives.
Each chamber has powers of its own. The House originates revenue bills and impeaches (charges) officials by a majority vote. The Senate tries impeachments (two-thirds to convict), gives advice and consent to the president’s appointments (a majority) and to treaties (two-thirds of senators present; the president then ratifies).
Size and term shape behavior. Debate in the 435-member House is more formal, run on strict rules and majority control; in the 100-member Senate it is looser, and each senator has more power to delay. Every House seat is elected every two years; only a third of the Senate is, which makes the Senate a continuous body. The two-party system shapes both.
The enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8, with the implied powers of the necessary and proper clause (McCulloch v. Maryland, Chapter 1), let Congress pass a budget, tax, borrow and coin money; declare war and fund the armed forces; set the rules of naturalization; regulate interstate commerce; create the federal courts below the Supreme Court and their jurisdiction; and oversee the executive branch and its agencies.
where bills are written, and where most die
The two chambers differ by design, and the difference shapes how a bill becomes law.
Leaders run each chamber. The Speaker, elected by a majority of the House, presides over its legislative work, with majority and minority leaders and whips. In the Senate the vice president presides but votes only to break a tie; the majority leader sets the floor schedule.
Both chambers refer bills to committees, which hold hearings, debate, and mark up bills with revisions and additions. The majority party holds every committee chair and a majority of the seats on almost every committee (the ethics committees are split evenly). The kinds: standing (permanent, by subject, such as Appropriations), select (temporary, often investigative), joint (members of both chambers) and conference (to reconcile the House and Senate versions of a bill).
Committees are where most bills die. In the 118th Congress (2023–24), 16,202 bills were introduced; committees reported 1,448; 935 passed the chamber they began in; and 274 public laws were enacted: 1.7% of the bills introduced. (Counts from the Congressional Record’s résumé of activity. A bill can skip a stage, so these are counts, not one group of bills followed through.)
Rules Committee, filibuster and cloture
A bill must pass both chambers in identical words; each chamber’s rules decide how hard that is.
In the House, a bill reported by committee usually goes to the Rules Committee, which writes a rule for floor debate: how long, and whether amendments are allowed (a closed rule allows none). The majority controls Rules, so it controls the floor. To speed debate the House can sit as the Committee of the Whole. All revenue bills must start in the House. A discharge petition signed by 218 members, a majority, can force a bill out of a committee that is sitting on it; it is rarely done.
In the Senate, debate is unlimited. A senator can hold the floor to delay a vote: a filibuster. Ending debate takes cloture, which under Senate Rule XXII needs three-fifths of the senators: 60 of 100. In the figure, 57 senators would pass the bill but cannot bring it to a vote.
Bills usually reach the Senate floor by unanimous consent: agreements to skip the rules that any one senator can block. A hold is a senator’s notice that he or she will object, which delays a bill or nomination.
The 60-vote threshold no longer applies to nominations. In November 2013 the Senate lowered cloture on nominations, except to the Supreme Court, to a simple majority; in April 2017 it did the same for Supreme Court nominations. Budget reconciliation bills have limited debate, so they cannot be filibustered.
When the chambers pass different versions, a conference committee (or an exchange of amendments) settles one text. Then it goes to the president.
mandatory and discretionary spending
No money may be spent unless Congress appropriates it; but most spending is not voted on each year.
In fiscal year 2024 the federal government spent $6.8 trillion (Congressional Budget Office):
As entitlement costs grow, the room for discretionary spending shrinks, unless taxes rise or the deficit grows. The figure rebuilds the red discretionary stack, as Congress must each year. If appropriations lapse, unfunded agencies shut down; Congress often passes a continuing resolution to keep them funded at current levels.
Members use the purse for their districts. Pork barrel spending (through earmarks) directs money to projects back home; logrolling is trading votes: I support your bill if you support mine.
roles, parties and the lines of districts
How members vote depends on whom they think they represent, on party, and on the districts that elect them.
Three models of representation: a delegate votes as constituents want; a trustee uses his or her own judgment of the public good; a politico moves between the two, depending on the issue and how much voters care.
Party now predicts most votes. Rising polarization leaves few members in the middle and makes compromise harder, so gridlock is common, especially in divided government, when one party holds the presidency and the other at least one chamber. Divided government sharpens partisanship: members vote against the president’s initiatives and nominees, especially a lame duck’s (one whose term is ending).
House districts are redrawn after each census, usually by state legislatures. Drawing them for partisan advantage is gerrymandering. The figure (hypothetical) has 50 voters, 40% red, and five seats:
Safe, one-party districts make members answer to primary voters, which adds to polarization.
Baker v. Carr (1962) and Shaw v. Reno (1993)
The Court has ruled that districts must hold equal numbers of people and may not be drawn mainly by race.
Baker v. Carr (1962). Tennessee had not redrawn its legislature’s districts since 1901, though people had moved to its cities, so a rural vote counted for far more than an urban one. Earlier courts called this a political question for legislatures. The Court held, 6–2, that the claim was justiciable: courts may hear challenges to apportionment under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Its successors set the rule of one person, one vote: House districts within a state must be equal in population (Wesberry v. Sanders, 1964), and so must state legislative districts (Reynolds v. Sims, 1964). In the figure, a plinth’s height is the weight of one vote: in a 3-voter district a vote counts 3.3 times as much as in an equal district of 10, and 6.7 times one in the 20-voter district.
Shaw v. Reno (1993). North Carolina drew a second majority-Black congressional district, the 12th, a long thin band along an interstate. The Court held, 5–4, that a district so irregular it can be explained only by race is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. The last plan in the figure draws equal districts, but one snakes to collect the red group: 8 of its 10 voters.
Partisan gerrymanders are another matter: in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) the Court held, 5–4, that claims of partisan gerrymandering are political questions beyond the federal courts.
formal and informal powers; the veto
Article II vests “the executive Power” in a president, and lists only a few powers; the rest grew in practice.
Presidents pursue a policy agenda with help from the vice president, the Cabinet and the Executive Office of the President.
Formal powers come from the Constitution: commander in chief of the armed forces; the veto; pardons; making treaties (with two-thirds of the Senate); appointing ambassadors, judges and officers (with Senate consent); receiving ambassadors; reporting on the State of the Union.
Informal powers are not written down: executive orders managing the executive branch (implied by the vested executive power or delegated by Congress), executive agreements with other countries (foreign policy without a treaty), signing statements that say how the president reads a law, and persuasion: bargaining with Congress and appeals to the public.
The figure follows a bill to the president’s desk. Under Article I, Section 7 the president has 10 days, Sundays excepted, to act:
overrides, confirmation, impeachment
Congress can undo a veto, refuse a nominee or treaty, deny funds and, in the end, remove a president.
To override a veto, each chamber must repass the bill by two-thirds of those present and voting: 290 representatives and 67 senators when all vote. In the figure (hypothetical), the House clears the bar with 301, but 62 senators fall short, so the veto stands. Overrides are rare: fewer than one veto in twenty since 1789 has been overridden.
When the president’s agenda conflicts with Congress’s, presidents turn to executive orders and directives to the bureaucracy. The courts check those too: they can rule an executive action unconstitutional or beyond the law.
Federalist No. 70 and the unilateral routes
Hamilton argued for a single, energetic executive; presidents since have stretched that energy.
“Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” (Federalist No. 70)
“It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.” (Federalist No. 70)
“The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers.” (Federalist No. 70)
Hamilton’s case: one person acts with “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch,” and one person can be held responsible, where a council would “conceal faults and destroy responsibility.” Anti-Federalists feared a single executive would become a king.
Presidents have expanded the office through routes that need no vote of Congress. The figure compares a treaty, which waits at the gate for 67 senators, with an executive agreement and an executive order, which go straight through. Executive agreements now far outnumber treaties. Presidents also claim broad war powers and use signing statements.
The limits remain: courts can strike down orders; Congress can override them by law or refuse funds; the next president can revoke them. The Twenty-Second Amendment (1951) limits a president to 2 elected terms, and at most 10 years in office: a sign of concern about the office’s growth. The debate goes on between a limited view (William Howard Taft: the president may use only powers the Constitution or a law grants, expressly or by fair implication) and an expansive one (Theodore Roosevelt: the president may do anything the public good requires that the law does not forbid).
the bully pulpit
Presidents lead by persuading the public, which in turn presses Congress.
Theodore Roosevelt called the office a bully pulpit: a platform from which the president can speak to the whole country at once. Going over Congress’s head to the public, so that voters call and write to their members, is going public. In the figure the president’s message spreads through the public, and the pressure flows on to Congress.
The Constitution requires one message: the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” The annual State of the Union address now sets out the president’s agenda before Congress and a national audience.
Technology changed the pulpit: radio (Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats), then television, then the internet and social media, which let a president respond to events within minutes and reach supporters directly, without the press deciding what is reported. The State of the Union and the bully pulpit are tools of agenda setting: they tell the public which issues matter most.
Federalist No. 78 and Marbury v. Madison (1803)
Federal judges serve during good behavior and decide whether laws conform to the Constitution: judicial review.
Article III creates one Supreme Court and the lower courts Congress chooses to establish; judges “hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” in effect for life. In Federalist No. 78 Hamilton defended both:
“Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.” (Federalist No. 78)
“It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” (Federalist No. 78)
The courts must therefore hold acts contrary to the Constitution void: “No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.” Independence, through permanent tenure, lets judges do it.
Marbury v. Madison (1803). William Marbury’s commission as a justice of the peace was never delivered, and he asked the Supreme Court to order it. Chief Justice John Marshall held that Marbury had a right to it, but that Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which let him sue in the Supreme Court first, unconstitutionally enlarged the Court’s original jurisdiction. The Court struck it down: the first use of judicial review against an act of Congress.
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” (Marbury v. Madison)
the courts and the role of precedent
Courts decide cases by following precedent; new justices can change which precedents stand.
The federal courts form a pyramid (uscourts.gov): 94 district courts try cases (original jurisdiction); 13 courts of appeals, 12 regional circuits and the Federal Circuit, hear appeals; the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in a few cases (such as disputes between states) and appellate jurisdiction over the rest.
Most cases reach the Court by a petition for a writ of certiorari. The justices receive thousands of petitions a year and grant few, recently about 60 cases a term; by the rule of four, four justices’ votes grant review.
Under stare decisis (“let the decision stand”) courts follow precedent, earlier rulings in cases with similar facts, which makes the law predictable and grounds rulings in law rather than preference. As presidents’ appointments change the Court’s ideological makeup, it sets new precedents or rejects old ones: Brown v. Board of Education (1954) rejected Plessy v. Ferguson; Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) overruled Roe v. Wade; Loper Bright (2024) overruled Chevron (2.13).
life tenure, opinions and controversy
Life tenure lets the Court rule against the political mood of the day, and that independence feeds debate about its power.
The figure follows one case up the pyramid. At the top, 4 justices vote to hear it, then all 9 decide (a hypothetical 6–3).
Justices never face voters, so the Court can deliver controversial or unpopular decisions: ending school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), or overruling Roe v. Wade in Dobbs (2022). Supporters see independence protecting rights from majorities; critics see unelected judges overriding elected branches. Either way the debate is about the Court’s power.
Because justices serve for life, the Court’s balance changes only as seats open. Each appointment can shift its rulings for decades, which is why nominations draw fierce fights.
appointments, laws, amendments, enforcement
Judicial review invites debate about how far the courts should go, and the other branches can limit them.
Judicial activism holds that judicial review lets courts overturn precedent and strike down legislative or executive acts. Judicial restraint holds that review should stay within existing constitutional and case precedent, deferring to the elected branches. Either label can fit rulings of any ideology.
The other branches shape the courts through who sits on them, what they may hear, and whether rulings are carried out:
The lit arrows are the checks on the courts. The others in the figure run among Congress, the president, the courts and the bureaucracy.
agencies, the civil service and iron triangles
The federal bureaucracy carries out the laws: it writes and enforces regulations, issues fines and testifies before Congress.
It is made of 15 cabinet departments (State, Defense, Treasury and the rest), independent regulatory agencies (such as the Securities and Exchange Commission), government corporations (such as the Postal Service) and other agencies.
Most employees are hired by merit, not by party. The Pendleton Act (1883), passed after a disappointed office-seeker assassinated President Garfield, began replacing the spoils system (jobs as rewards for party loyalty) with a civil service chosen by examination. The merit system hires and promotes for professionalism, specialization and neutrality, not political patronage.
Policy is often made in an iron triangle: a congressional committee, an agency and an interest group that serve one another. The committee gives the agency funding and authority; the agency writes rules the interest group likes; the group gives members campaign support. Each red flow in the figure has a blue flow back. For farm policy, the triangle is the agriculture committees, the Department of Agriculture and farm groups.
An issue network (the gray ring) is looser: a temporary coalition of experts, advocates, journalists and officials that forms to promote a common issue.
from a statute’s words to a rule; Loper Bright (2024)
Congress writes broad laws and leaves the details to agencies: discretionary authority.
A statute may tell an agency to set “safe” limits or “reasonable” rates. The agency turns that into regulations with the force of law. Under the Administrative Procedure Act (1946), most rules follow notice and comment, as in the figure:
Agencies that use delegated discretion this way include the Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Veterans Affairs and Education, the Environmental Protection Agency (air-quality standards under the Clean Air Act), the Federal Election Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
For forty years courts deferred to an agency’s reasonable reading of an ambiguous statute (Chevron v. NRDC, 1984). In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) the Court overruled Chevron: judges must use their own independent judgment to decide whether an agency acted within its statutory authority, though they may weigh the agency’s view. Agencies’ rules now face closer review in court.
oversight, the purse and the president
Unelected officials answer to Congress, the president and the courts.
Congress:
The president appoints agency heads, can remove many of them, directs agencies by executive order, and proposes their budgets through the Office of Management and Budget; a president’s ideology and influence shape how agencies pursue the administration’s goals.
Compliance monitoring checks that funds are used properly and regulations followed; it can also slow the carrying out of a policy.
The courts hear challenges to rules and enforcement actions, and since Loper Bright decide statutes’ meaning for themselves.
The checks can pull against each other. A president may push an agency to act while a committee resists, and the agency, answering to both, may favor whichever controls its budget.
how the four make policy together
No branch makes policy alone: each step can be blocked, reshaped or delayed by another.
A policy idea must pass both chambers (2.1–2.3), survive the president’s veto (2.4–2.5), be carried out by agencies with discretion of their own (2.12–2.14), and withstand review in court (2.8–2.11). The figure shows every check at once; the lit arrows are the checks on Congress.
Sharing powers among the branches gives interest groups, states and citizens multiple access points to influence policy (lobbying Congress, petitioning an agency, suing in court) and constrains what any one of them can do. Holding the bureaucracy accountable is hard for the same reason: Congress, the president and the courts each pull it toward their own goals.
The structure produces predictable effects:
On the exam, explain an interaction as a cause and its effect: name the power, the branch that holds it, and how it limits the other.
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