Maryland General Assembly
legislative body of the State of Maryland, United States
The Maryland General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland that convenes within the State House in Annapolis. It is a bicameral body: the upper chamber, the Maryland Senate, has 47 representatives, and the lower chamber, the Maryland House of Delegates, has 141 representatives. Members of both houses serve four-year terms. Each house elects its own officers, judges the qualifications and election of its own members, establishes rules for the conduct of its business, and may punish or expel its own members.
The General Assembly convenes its legislative session for 90 days each year to act on more than 2,300 bills including the state's annual budget, which it must pass before adjourning sine die. The General Assembly's 446th session convened on January 10, 2024.
History
The forerunner of the Maryland General Assembly was the colonial institution, an Assembly of Free Marylanders (and also Council of Maryland).
Maryland's foundational charter created a state ruled by the Palatine lord, Lord Baltimore. As ruler, Lord Baltimore owned directly all of the land granted in the charter, and possessed absolute authority over his domain.
However, as elsewhere in British North America, British political institutions were re-created in the colonies, and the Maryland General Assembly fulfilled much the same function as the House of Commons.
“Maryland General Assembly” enters the record as legislative body of the State of Maryland, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maryland, General and Assembly can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10566065. VIAF identifies the subject as 126665183. The Library of Congress control number is n80046011. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maryland General Assembly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.