- Writes and enacts laws
- Enacts taxes, authorizes borrowing, and sets the budget
- Has sole power to declare war
- May start investigations, especially against the executive branch
- The Senate considers presidential appointments of judges and executive department heads
- The Senate ratifies treaties
- The House of Representatives may impeach, and the Senate may remove, executive and judicial officers
- Sets up federal courts except the Supreme Court, and sets the number of justices on the Supreme Court
- May override presidential vetoes
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- May veto laws
- Wages war at the direction of Congress (Congress makes the rules for the military)
- Makes decrees or declarations (for example, declaring a state of emergency) and promulgates lawful regulations and executive orders
- Appoints judges and executive department heads
- Has power to grant pardons to convicted persons, except in cases of impeachment
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- Determines which laws Congress intended to apply to any given case
- Determines whether a law is unconstitutional
- Determines how Congress meant the law to apply to disputes
- Determines how a law acts to determine the disposition of prisoners
- Determines how a law acts to compel testimony and the production of evidence
- Determines how laws should be interpreted to assure uniform policies in a top-down fashion via the appeals process, but gives discretion in individual cases to low-level judges. (The amount of discretion depends upon the standard of review, determined by the type of case in question.)
- Polices its own members
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