United States Senate
upper house of the United States Congress
The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, and the U.S. House of Representatives is the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the Constitution to make and pass or defeat federal legislation.
The Senate has exclusive power to confirm U.S. presidential appointments, to approve or reject treaties, and to convict or exonerate impeachment cases brought by the House. The Senate and the House provide a check and balance on the powers of the executive and judicial branches of government. The composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the U.S. Constitution, which has been in effect since March 4, 1789. Each of the 50 states is represented by two senators who serve staggered six-year terms, for a total of 100 members.
From the Senate's inception in 1789 until 1913, senators were appointed by the state legislatures of their respective states. Since 1913, however, following ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, senators have been elected by statewide popular vote.
The Senate has several powers of advice and consent. These include the approval of treaties, the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, federal judges (including justices of the Supreme Court), flag officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, other federal executive officials, and federal uniformed officers.
“United States Senate” enters the record as upper house of the United States Congress. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Senate 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 Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q66096. VIAF identifies the subject as 129637095. The Library of Congress control number is n79022161. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1789 and 1913.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Senate” 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.