The Congress Of The USA

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g the Thirteenth Decennial Census in 1910, in accordance with Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution. This number was increased temporarily to 437 for the 87th Congress to provide for one Representative each for Alaska and Hawaii (because each state is entitled to at least 1 member in this chamber). The Constitution limits the number of Representatives to not more than one for every 30,000 of population. Under a former apportionment in one state, a particular Representative represented more than 900,000 constituents, while another in the same state was elected from a district having a population of only 175,000. But the Supreme court ruled that this was illegal, as the Constitution requires that "as nearly as is practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's". At present, six states -- Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming -- have only one representative. On the other hand, six states have more than 20 representatives -- California alone has 45.
In addition to the Representatives from each of the States, a Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and Delegates from the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands are elected pursuant to federal law. The Resident Commissioner and the Delegates have most of the prerogatives of Representatives including the right to vote in committees to which they are elected. However, the Resident Commissioner and the Delegates do not have the right to vote on matters before the House.

2. A bicameral Congress

There are two main reasons why the Congress has two houses, rather than a single-house (unicameral) system. The first is in keeping with historical tradition. The framers of the Constitution were most familiar with the British Parliament, which consists of two houses. In fact, at the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the legislatures of 11 of the 13 stat...