Section I. All legislative powers herein delegated shall be vested in the Parliament of the Confederate States of Earth, the successor legislature to the Provisional Parliament of the Confederate States of Earth preceding, which shall consist of a House of Members and a House of Representatives.
—Section I, Article I of the Constitution of the Confederate States of Earth
The Parliament of the Confederate States of Earth (also known as the Confederate States Parliament and the Confederate Parliament) was the legislative body of the Confederate States of Earth, a breakaway nation which had seceded from the Union of Earth States in 21 BBY and allied with the Confederacy of Independent Systems. The first legislature of the C.S.E was the short-lived Provisional Parliament of the Confederate States of Earth, which was founded by the Alliance of Ten and lasted only a fortnight before it was reorganized into the Confederate Parliament, as specified in the Constitution of the Confederate States of Earth. Each Confederate state elected a representative to serve as an MCP (Member of Confederate Parliament) for their respective state. From the founding of the Confederacy until after First Battle of Earth the Parliament consisted of only 10 MCPs, which quickly became 59 MCPs as the First Secessionist Crisis picked up during and shortly after the the First Battle of Earth, the Second Secessionist Crisis began following the Burning of Valley City, and saw the amount of member states grow rapidly, following the crises Parliament consisted of 95 MCPs, most of the MCPs had served as senators in the Union Senate prior to the secession of the Confederacy. The leader of the Parliament was the Confederate High Chancellor, who also served as the head of government.
Due to the C.S.E's alliance with the C.I.S, and later, membership of the C.I.S, the Confederate Parliament was directly linked with the Separatist Parliament, each Parliament had a representative in the others Parliament, the Confederate representative to the Separatist Parliament was elected by each of the MCPs to represent them as a whole.
We have representation in the Separatist Parliament, do you have representation in the Republic Senate? I think not, we are a official member of the Confederacy, with a representative in her parliament, whilst you are a mere territory of the Republic, we are a democracy, you are dictated to by an oppressive dictatorship calling itself a "democratic Republic"!
—A Confederate to a Union loyalist
Houses[]
A bicemeral assembly, the Parliament consisted of two Houses - the "House of Members", the upper house, in which the Members of the Confederate Parliament, the equivalents to the Senators of the Separatist Parliament, sat, the House of Members consisted of three MCPs from each member state, who had been elected for a 6 year term, each of these MCPs was divided into 3 "Classes", each of which served a 2 year term - so the "First Class" served the first 2 years, when their seat would be vacated for the "Second Class", who would served a further 2 years, when the seats would once again be vacated in preparation for the "Third Class", who would serve the third, and final, 2 year term. At the end of the six years a new national election for the MCPs would take place.
Across a hall from the House of Members sat the House of Representatives, the lower of the two houses, unlike the MCPs the Representatives were elected once every 2 years by the citizenry. The Constitution stated that each state would have at least one Representative, but there could be no more than 1 Representative for every 50,000 people. Also, according to the Constitution the enumeration of the actual number of Representatives allowed by each state would be undertaken with three years of the first meeting of the Parliament, which would be decided through the counting of "Free Persons" and adding that number to the number of people who weren't free, e.g. Prisoners, following which there would be a recount of the amount of Representatives allowed by each state once every 10 years.
Until the counting was to be made a set number of Representatives for the 10 founding Confederate nations was declared in the Constitution, based on the size of the nations and the approximate number of people within these nations, the amount of Representatives within each state were, in order of most to least: Kingdom of Princeland: 10, Erastan: 9, Sothland Republic: 8, Kingdom of Westland: 7, Zarkan Kingdom/Republic of Selandia/: 6, Toman Republic/Norland: 5, Confederation of the Drelan River: 3 and, finally, the United Provinces of Adin and Morin: 2.
Bills were typically created through a motion by an MCP, following which the House of Members would debate on the bill and cast a vote, if the bill received a majority vote in favour of it, if the vote was a tie then the Speaker would give their vote to break the tie, it would be passed by the House of Members to the House of Representatives for their own debate, if they also voted in favour of the bill it would be passed to the President of the Confederacy for their own consideration, if the President also approved they would sign the bill into law.
As the upper house the House of Members was concerned with national policy, and acts relating to it, including treaties of alliance with foreign powers, treaties of peace, etc.
As the lower house the House of Representatives tended to deal more with national civil laws and acts, including the creation of bills concerning the creation of national and government flags, which the Representatives usually handled by themselves until they found a design and created a motion to adopt it, following which they would pass it to the House of Members for consideration, who would then vote on it, if the House of Members voted in favour it would be passed to the President, who would then sign the bill, and the flag(s) would enter official use.
If the motion was voted against it would simply be dropped, however, if one house voted in favour and the other house against, the motion would be passed back to the original house with a list of reasons as to why the motion was rejected, the house would then amend the motion and recast their vote, if they voted in favour once more it would be passed back to the other house, if the other house once again voted against it the motion would be dropped.
Appearances[]
- Ashes of War (First non-canon appearence)
- A.R.K.: Ancients to the Modern Aliens (Chronologically first non-canon appearance)