1.
Bicameralism
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A bicameral legislature is one in which the legislators are divided into two separate assemblies, chambers or houses. As of 2015, somewhat less than half of the national legislatures are bicameral. Often, the members of the two chambers are elected or selected using different methods, which vary from country to country and this can often lead to the two chambers having very different compositions of members. However, in many Westminster system parliaments, the house to which the executive is responsible can overrule the other house, some legislatures lie in between these two positions, with one house only able to overrule the other under certain circumstances. For example, one house would represent the aristocracy, and the other would represent the commoners as was the case in the Kingdom of England. Others, such as France under the Ancien Régime had a legislature known as the Estates General, which consisted of separate chambers for the clergymen, the nobility. The Founding Fathers of the United States also favoured a bicameral legislature, the idea was to have the Senate be wealthier and wiser. Benjamin Rush saw this though, and noted that, this type of dominion is almost always connected with opulence, the Senate was created to be a stabilising force, elected not by mass electors, but selected by the State legislators. Senators would be more knowledgeable and more sort of republican nobility—and a counter to what Madison saw as the fickleness. He noted further that the use of the Senate is to consist in its proceeding with more coolness, with system and with more wisdom. Madisons argument led the Framers to grant the Senate prerogatives in foreign policy, an area where steadiness, discretion, the Senate was chosen by state legislators, and senators had to possess a significant amount of property in order to be deemed worthy and sensible enough for the position. In fact, it was not until the year 1913 that the 17th Amendment was passed, as part of the Great Compromise, they invented a new rationale for bicameralism in which the Senate would have states represented equally, and the House would have them represented by population. Many nations with parliaments have to some degree emulated the British three-tier model, nevertheless, the older justification for second chambers—providing opportunities for second thoughts about legislation—has survived. An example of controversy regarding a second chamber has been the debate over the powers of the Canadian Senate or the election of the Senate of France. The relationship between the two chambers varies, in cases, they have equal power, while in others. The first tends to be the case in federal systems and those with presidential governments, the latter tends to be the case in unitary states with parliamentary systems. In the United States both houses of the U. S and this is due to their original location in the two-story building that was to house them. In Canada, the country as a whole is divided into a number of Senate Divisions, each with a different number of Senators, Senators in Canada are not elected by the people but are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister
2.
Senate of Poland
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The Senate is the upper house of the Polish parliament, the lower house being the Sejm. The history of the Polish Senate is rich in tradition and stretches back over 500 years and it was one of the first constituent bodies of a bicameral parliament in Europe and existed without hiatus until the dismemberment of the Polish state in 1795. After a brief period of existence in the period the Senate was again abolished by the authorities of the Peoples Republic of Poland. It was not re-established until the collapse of communism and rebirth of democracy in Poland in 1989, the Senate is based in Warsaw and is located in a building which forms part of the Sejm Complex on Ul. Wiejska, close to Three Crosses Square and Ujazdow Castle and it consists of 100 senators elected by universal ballot and is headed by the Marshal of the Senate. The incumbent Marshal of the Senate is Senior Marshal Stanisław Karczewski, in line with Article 10, Paragraph 2, and Article 95 of the Polish Constitution of April 2,1997, the Senate and the Sejm exercises legislative power. The Senate is composed of 100 senators who are elected for a term of four years in general election in a vote by secret ballot. Alongside the Sejm, the President of the Polish Republic, the Council of Ministers and all citizens of Poland, the Senate is allowed 30 days to examine any piece of draft legislation passed by the Sejm,14 days if a bill is considered to be urgent. Any bill submitted by the Sejm to the Senate may be adopted by the latter without any amendments or amended or rejected. Any resolution of the Senate, as a result of which a bill is repealed or amended, is considered to be passed provided it has not been rejected by the Sejm, however, for the state budget, the Senate has 20 days to examine it. For amending the constitution, the Senate has 60 days for analysis, if the constitution is amended, identical wording of the amendment must be approved by both the Sejm and the Senate. The president cannot decide to stage a nationwide referendum on matters of importance unless he or she has been given explicit permission to do so by the Senate. The Senate is also empowered to examine any reports submitted by the Commissioner for the Protection of Citizens Rights, however, unlike the Sejm, the Senate has no role in providing for oversight of the executive. The Senate can be traced back approximately five hundred years to a council of royal advisors, in 1501 at Mielnik, senators attempted to force the soon to be crowned king Alexander I Jagiellon to devolve all royal powers relating to the governing of the state to them. However, whilst Alexander first agreed, after his coronation he refused to affirm this privilege, later the Nihil Novi act of 1505 affirmed the right of both the Chamber of Envoys and Senate to propagate common law for the kingdom. At this time the competences of the Senate were also laid down as pertaining to participation in legislation, foreign policy, in 1537 the Senate followed a course of action which would have seen it become the most important institution in protecting landowners’ rights and freedoms. However, this view was at odds with those of Sigismund I the Old who believed that the Senate was becoming far too powerful. Resultantly, over the period of 1562–69, the Senate lost many of its powers and influence, eventually becoming subordinate to its formerly-equal companion body, the Chamber of Envoys
3.
Law and Justice
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Law and Justice, abbreviated to PiS, is a right-wing national-conservative, and Christian democratic political party in Poland. With 216 seats in the Sejm and 56 in the Senate, the party was founded in 2001 by the Kaczyński twins, Lech and Jarosław. It was formed part of the Solidarity Electoral Action, with the Christian democratic Centre Agreement forming the new partys core. The party won the 2005 election, while Lech Kaczyński won the presidency, Jarosław served as Prime Minister, before calling elections in 2007, in which the party came second to Civic Platform. Several leading members, including Lech Kaczyński, died in a crash in 2010. The party programme is dominated by the Kaczyńskis conservative and law, the party is solidarist and mildly eurosceptic. PiS is a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe European political party, the current sixteen PiS MEPs sit, as well as three other people elected from the PiS register, in the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament. The AWS itself was created from an array of many small right-wing political parties. In the 2001 general election PiS gained 44 seats in the chamber of the Polish Parliament with 9. 5% of votes. In 2002, Lech Kaczyński was elected mayor of Warsaw and he handed the party leadership to his twin brother in 2003. In the 2005 general election, PiS took first place with 27. 0% of votes and it was almost universally expected that the two largest parties, PiS and Civic Platform, would form a coalition government. The putative coalition parties had an out, however, related to a fierce contest for the Polish presidency. In the end, Lech Kaczyński won the round of the presidential election on 23 October 2005 with 54. 0% of the vote, ahead of Donald Tusk. After the 2005 elections, Jarosław should have become Prime Minister, in July 2006 PiS formed a right-wing coalition government with the agrarian populist Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland and nationalist League of Polish Families, headed by Jarosław Kaczyński. Association with these parties, on the margins of Polish politics, when accusations of corruption and sexual harassment against Andrzej Lepper, the leader of Self Defense, surfaced, PiS chose to end the coalition and called for new elections. In the 2007 general election PiS managed to secure 32. 1% of votes, although an improvement over its showing from 2005, the results were nevertheless a defeat for the party, as Civic Platform gathered 41. 5%. The party won 166 out of 460 seats in the Sejm and 39 seats in Polands Senate, on 10 April 2010, its former leader Lech Kaczyński died in the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash. The party won the 2015 parliamentary election, this time with an outright majority—something no Polish party had done since the fall of Communism, in the normal course of events, this should have made Jarosław Kaczyński prime minister for a second time
4.
Civic Platform
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Civic Platform is a liberal-conservative, Christian democratic, and liberal political party in Poland. Civic Platform came to following the 2007 general election as the major coalition partner in Polands government. Tusk was re-elected as Prime Minister in the 2011 general election, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz led the party in the 2015 general election but was defeated by the Law and Justice party. On November 16,2015 Civic Platform government stepped down after exactly 8 years in power, in 2010 Civic Platform candidate Bronisław Komorowski was elected as President of Poland, but failed in running for re-election in 2015. PO is the second largest party in the Sejm, with 138 seats, Civic Platform is a member of the European Peoples Party. The party was formed in 2001 as a split from Solidarity Electoral Action, under the leadership of Andrzej Olechowski and Maciej Płażyński, in the 2001 general election, PO emerged as the largest opposition party, behind the ruling centre-left party Democratic Left Alliance. PO remained the second-largest party at the 2005 general election, but this time behind the national-conservative party Law, in 2007, Civic Platform overtook PiS, now established as the two dominant parties, and formed a coalition government with the Polish Peoples Party. Following the Smolensk disaster of April 2010, Bronisław Komorowski became the first President from PO in the 2010 presidential election, since its creation, the party has shown stronger electoral performances in the west and north of Poland. The Civic Platform was founded in 2001 as a split from existing parties, founders Andrzej Olechowski, Maciej Płażyński, and Donald Tusk were sometimes jokingly called the Three Tenors by Polish media and commentators. Olechowski and Płażyński left the party during the 2001–2005 parliamentary term, leaving Tusk as the remaining founder. I can say that I participated in a number of discussions, above all, I had to convince Olechowski and Paweł Piskorski to an idea, I also talked to Donald Tusk, said Czempiński. In the 2001 general election the party secured 12. 6% of the vote and 58 deputies in the Sejm, in 2005, PO led all opinion polls with 26% to 30% of public support. However, in the 2005 general election, in which it was led by Jan Rokita, PO polled only 24. 1% and unexpectedly came second to the 27% garnered by Law and Justice. A centre-right coalition of PO and PiS was deemed most likely to form a government after the election, yet the putative coalition parties had a falling out in the wake of the fiercely contested Polish presidential election of 2005. Lech Kaczyński won the round of the presidential election on 23 October 2005 with 54% of the vote, ahead of Tusk. Due to the demands of PiS for control of all the armed ministries, instead, PiS formed a coalition government with the support of the League of Polish Families and Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland. PO became the opposition to this PiS-led coalition government, the PiS-led coalition fell apart in 2007 amid corruption scandal with Andrzej Lepper and Tomasz Lipiec and internal leadership disputes. These events led to the new elections in 2007, in the 21 October 2007 parliamentary election, PO won 41. 51% of the popular vote and 209 out of 460 seats in the Sejm and 60 out of 100 seats in the Senate of Poland
5.
Warsaw
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Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland, roughly 260 kilometres from the Baltic Sea and 300 kilometres from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population is estimated at 1.750 million residents within a metropolitan area of 3.101 million residents. The city limits cover 516.9 square kilometres, while the area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres. Once described as Paris of the East, Warsaw was believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world until World War II. On 9 November 1939, the city was awarded Polands highest military decoration for heroism, Warsaw is one of Europe’s most dynamic metropolitan cities. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world, in 2017 the city came 4th in the “Business-friendly” category and 8th in the “Human capital and life style”. It was also ranked as one of the most liveable cities in Central, Warsaw is considered an Alpha– global city, a major international tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. The city is a significant centre of research and development, BPO, ITO, the Warsaw Stock Exchange is the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe. Frontex, the European Union agency for external security, has its headquarters in Warsaw. Together with Frankfurt, London and Paris, Warsaw is also one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union, the city is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Warsaw. The historic city-centre of Warsaw with its picturesque Old Town in 1980 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, buildings represent examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw provides many examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque, neoclassical and modern periods, furthermore, the city is positioning itself as Europes chic cultural capital with thriving art and club scenes and renowned restaurants. Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, according to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula River with whom Wars fell in love. In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century nobleman who owned a village located at the site of Mariensztat neighbourhood. See also the Vršovci family which had escaped to Poland, the official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa. A native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak, warszawianin, warszawianka, warszawiacy, other names for Warsaw include Varsovia and Varsóvia, Varsovie, Varsavia, Warschau, װאַרשע /Varshe, Варшава /Varšava /Varshava, Varšuva, Varsó. The first fortified settlements on the site of todays Warsaw were located in Bródno, after Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called Warszowa
6.
President of Poland
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The President of the Republic of Poland is the Polish head of state. His or her rights and obligations are determined in the Constitution of Poland, the president heads the executive branch. In addition the president has a right to dissolve the parliament in certain cases, the first president of Poland, Gabriel Narutowicz, was sworn in as president of the Second Republic on 11 December 1922. He was elected by the National Assembly under the terms of the 1921 Constitution of Poland, previously Józef Piłsudski had been Chief of State under the provisional 1919 Constitution. Who was fed up with regional bickering, staged a coup deposed the president and had the National Assembly elect a new one, Ignacy Mościcki, under the thumb of Sanacja. Just before Piłsudski died, parliament passed the 1935 April Constitution of Poland which incorporated Piłsudskis ideals, Mościcki continued as president until he resigned following the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The transfer from Mościcki to Raczkiewicz was in accordance with Article 24 of the 1935 April Constitution and he served until the 1952 Constitution eliminated the office of the president. Following the 1989 amendments to the constitution restored the presidency, Wojciech Jaruzelski. In Polands first direct election, Lech Wałęsa won and was sworn in on 22 December 1990. The office of the president was continued in the Constitution of 1997, which now provides the requirements for, the duties of, the President of Poland is elected directly by the people to serve for five years and can be reelected only once. Pursuant to the provisions of the Constitution, the President is elected by an absolute majority, if no candidate succeeds in passing this threshold, a second round of voting is held with the participation of the two candidates with the largest and second largest number of votes respectively. The President has the right to initiate the legislative process, the President also makes decisions on award of highest academic titles, as well as state distinctions and orders. In addition, he has the right of clemency, viz. he can dismiss final court verdicts. The President performs his duties with the help of the offices, the Chancellery of the President, the Office of National Security. Several properties are owned by the Office of the President and are used by the Head of State as his or her official residence, the Presidential Palace in Warsaw is largest palace in Warsaw and the official seat of the President of the Republic of Poland since 1993. The first presidential tenant was Lech Wałęsa when he moved to the Palace from Belweder in 1994, the palace also serves as an official residence for heads of state on official visits to Poland and other important guests. Presidential Castle in Wisła in a built for the Habsburgs as their hunting cottage. Since 2002 it is again a property of the President, restored and opened in 2005 by the President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and it is today a recreational and conference centre for the President and a hotel
7.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
8.
Andrzej Duda
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Andrzej Sebastian Duda is a Polish lawyer, politician and, since 6 August 2015, the sixth President of Poland. Before the 2015 elections, he was a member of Polish Sejm, Andrzej Duda was born in Kraków, the son of Janina Milewska and Jan Tadeusz Duda, professors at the AGH University of Science and Technology. His grandfather fought in the Polish–Soviet War and later in the Home Army during the Second World War and he attended Jan III Sobieski High School, Kraków. He studied law at the Jagiellonian University, in October 2001 he was appointed as an assistant in Administrative Law Department of Jagiellonian University, and in January 2005 obtained a PhD degree in law there. Due to his career, he has been mostly on unpaid leave since September 2006, except for a 13-month interval beginning in September 2010. Duda began his career with the now-defunct Freedom Union Party in the early 2000s. After the parliamentary elections in 2005, he began his collaboration with the Law, from 2006 to 2007 he was an undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Justice. From 2007 to 2008 he was a member of the Polish State Tribunal, from 2008 to 2010 he was an undersecretary of state in the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland during the presidency of Lech Kaczyński. However, he did not sit out the term, becoming elected in 2014 as a member of the European Parliament. In the first round of the 2015 presidential election, he came in first, receiving 5,179,092 votes, in the second round he took 51. 55% of the vote against the 48. 45% share of his rival, incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski. On 26 May 2015, he resigned from party membership. The five-year term of Andrzej Duda began on August 6,2015 with taking an oath of office during a National Assembly session, Duda rejected the European Unions proposal of migrant quotas to redistribute asylum seekers, saying, I won’t agree to a dictate of the strong. I won’t back a Europe where the advantage of the size of a population will be a reason to force solutions on other countries regardless of their national interests. Eventually Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz declared that Poland, as an expression of “European solidarity, according to some lawyers Duda has breached the Constitution of Poland. On 3 and 9 December 2015 the president has sworn in five candidates for the same office selected by the Sejm of the VIII cadence. In June 2016 Duda rejected appointing 10 judges selected by the National Council of the Judiciary of Poland, Duda is married to Agata Kornhauser, a teacher of German at Jan III Sobieski High School in Kraków. They had met at a party while still attending rival schools and have been married since 21 December 1994, together they have one daughter, Kinga, born in 1995, now also studying law. His father-in-law is Julian Kornhauser, a writer, translator
9.
Sejm
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The Sejm of the Republic of Poland is the lower house of the Polish parliament. It consists of 460 deputies elected by ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland. In the Kingdom of Poland, Sejm referred to the entire three-chamber parliament of Poland, comprising the house, the upper house. It was thus a three-estate parliament, since the Second Polish Republic, Sejm has referred only to the lower house of the parliament, the upper house is called the Senat Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. Sejm stems from an Old Slavic word meaning gathering and its origin was the Kings Councils, which gained power during the time of Polands fragmentation. The Sejm in Łęczyca was the most notable of these councils and it forbade arbitrary sequestration of supplies in the countryside and takeover of bishopric lands after the death of a bishop. These early Sejms were not an event, they convened at the Kings behest. After the 1493 Sejm in Piotrków, it became a regularly convening body, the bicameral system was also established there. The Sejm now comprised two chambers, the Senat of 81 bishops and other dignitaries, and the Chamber of Envoys, over time, the envoys in the lower chamber grew in number and power as they pressed the king for more privileges. The Sejm eventually became more active in supporting the goals of the privileged classes when the King ordered that the landed nobility. Its chambers reserved the final decisions in legislation, taxation, budget, and treasury matters, foreign policy, until the end of the 16th century, unanimity was not required, and the majority-voting process was the most commonly used system for voting. Later, with the rise of the Polish magnates and their increasing power, additionally, if the envoys were unable to reach a unanimous decision within six weeks, deliberations were declared void and all previous acts passed by that Sejm were annulled. From the mid-17th century onward, any objection to a Sejm resolution, by either an envoy or a senator, automatically caused the rejection of other, previously approved resolutions. This was because all resolutions passed by a session of the Sejm formed a whole resolution. It is estimated that between 1493 and 1793, a Sejm was held 240 times, the total sum of which was 44 years. The Chamber of Envoys, despite its name, consisted not only of 77 envoys from the hereditary nobility, all deputies were covered by Parliamentary immunity, with each individual serving for a term of office of six years, with half of the deputies being elected every two years. Candidates for deputy had to be able to read and write, the legal voting age was 21, except for those citizens serving in the military, the personnel of which were not allowed to vote. Parliamentary sessions were initially convened every two years, and lasted for 30 days, however, after many clashes between liberal deputies and conservative government officials, sessions were later called only four times
10.
Open list
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Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a partys candidates are elected. Additionally, an open list system can allow a voter the alternative of voting for the party as a whole without expressing a preference between individuals. There are differences possible between varying open list systems, each giving the voter varying amounts of influence, voters choice is usually called preference vote. A relatively closed open list system is one where a candidate must get a full quota of votes on his or her own to be assured of winning a seat. The total number of seats won by the party minus the number of its candidates that achieved this quota gives the number of unfilled seats and these are then successively allocated to the partys not-yet-elected candidates who were ranked highest on the original list. In a more open list system, the quota for election could be lowered from the above amount and it is then possible that more of a partys candidates achieve this quota than the total seats won by the party. It should therefore be made clear in advance whether list ranking or absolute votes take precedence in that case, in Dutch elections the voter can give his vote to any candidate in a list, the vote for this candidate is called a preference vote. If a candidate has at least 25% of the quota then he/she takes priority over the other candidates who stand higher on the party list. An example, A party list got 5000 votes, if the quota is 1000 votes, then the party wins five seats. Candidates #1, #7 and #4 have each achieved 25% of the quota and they get the first three of the five seats the party has won. The other two seats will be taken by #2 and #3, the two highest remaining positions on the party list and this means that #5 is not elected even though being the fifth on the list and having more preference votes than #2. In practice, at the level only one or two candidates can precede on their lists. This happens more often at the level where the quota is lower. Parties usually allow candidates to ask for votes, but without campaigning negatively against other candidates on the list. In elections in Sweden, the most open list is used, in Slovakia each voter may, in addition to the party, select one to four candidates from the ordered party list. Candidates who are selected by more than 3% of the voters are elected first. For European elections, voters select two candidates and the candidates must have more than 10% of the votes to override the party list. In the European election in 2009 three of Slovakias thirteen MEPs were elected solely by virtue of preference votes and only one was elected solely by virtue of her position on the party list, sometimes, however, people want to express their support for a particular person
11.
Senate
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A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature or parliament. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate, so-called as an assembly of the senior and therefore allegedly wiser, thus, the literal meaning of the word senate is, Assembly of Elders. Many countries have a named an senate, composed of senators who may be elected, appointed, have inherited the title, or gained membership by other methods. Modern senates typically serve to provide a chamber of second thought to consider legislation passed by a lower house, whose members are usually elected. The modern word Senate is derived from the word senātus, which comes from senex, the members or legislators of a senate are called senators. The Latin word senator was adopted into English with no change in spelling and its meaning is derived from a very ancient form of social organization, in which advisory or decision-making powers are reserved for the eldest men. This form adaptation was used to show the power of those in body and for the process to be thorough. The original senate was the Roman Senate, which lasted until 580, in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Senate continued until the Fourth Crusade, circa 1202–1204. This may include minimum age required for voters and candidates, proportional or majoritarian or plurality system, typically, the senate is referred to as the upper house and has a smaller membership than the lower house. In some federal states senates also exist at the subnational level, in the United States all states with the exception of Nebraska have a state senate. There is also the US Senate at the federal level, córdoba and Tucumán changed to unicameral systems in 2001 and 2003 respectively. In Australia and Canada, only the house of the federal parliament is known as the Senate. All Australian states other than Queensland have a house known as a Legislative council. Several Canadian provinces also once had a Legislative Council, but these have all been abolished, in Germany, the last Senate of a State parliament, the Senate of Bavaria, was abolished in 1999. Senate membership can be determined either through elections or appointments, for example, elections are held every three years for half the membership of the Australian Senate, the term of a senator being six years. The terms Senate and Senator, however, do not necessarily refer to a chamber of a legislature, The Senate of Finland was, until 1919, the executive branch. The Senate of Latvia fulfilled a similar function during the interbellum. In a number of cities which were members of the Hanse, such as Greifswald, Lübeck, Rostock, Stralsund, or Wismar
