Confederate Senate

The Confederate Senate was the legislative and executive branch of the Black Star Confederacy. It was located on Fuller. The government of the Confederacy was organized around this unicameral legislative body.

Powers
The Senate was the legislative and executive power of the Black Star Confederacy. It also had limited judicial authority, presumably for high-profile plaintiffs or cases too controversial for the Court of Justice. Such cases included trying Senators for treason, crimes against civilization and presumably corruption and treason of the Confederate President.

Each senator was limited to introducing one bill per year, with a straight up-down vote required to get the bill out of committee and to the Senate as a whole.

ConfedNet channel 13 was reserved strictly for use by the Confederate Senate.

Composition
The Senate was headed by the President. It mainly consisted of representative assemblymen. Primary members were represented in the Senate by a governor-delegate, or Senator. Each Senator has a single vote, regardless of the population represented. Affiliate members were represented on Fuller by a Legate, who could speak in general sessions of the Senate, but not vote on official Senate business (to avoid dual representation) or serve in the Senate's various working bodies. In 17 ABY, there were nearly 100 senators, with each representing 1 world.

As a body with a large and potentially unlimited membership, the Senate-in-whole was an almost impossibly unwieldy structure for getting work done. Consequently, most of the real governance was performed by the Senate's councils, committees, and commissions. The daily business of the Senate proper was primarily speech-making and public debate. Councils were appointed bodies with autonomous decision-making and appropriation authority over some segment of government operations outside the Senate proper (for example, the Defence Council, which oversaw the Confederate Defence Force). The most populous and powerful members of the Confederacy were disproportionately represented on the Senate's councils. Committees were elected bodies with the authority to administer various aspects of Senate operations, including the general budget. They were semi-autonomous; in the event of a unanimous committee vote, the approval of the Senate-in-whole was not required (however, the Senate-in-whole could override a less-than-unanimous committee decision with a three-to-five majority). Commissions were voluntary bodies with an advisory capacity only. They could prepare reports on issues of concern for presentation to the President, to the Prime Minister, to the Supreme Commander, or to the general membership; schedule and conduct hearings; and contract for independent research.

The senior members of the Senate were seated at the lower levels, with the newer and less powerful senators seated in the upper tiers. A Decuri acted as the sergeant-at-arms.