Galactic Senate

The Galactic Senate, also known as the New Republic Senate, the Republic Congress, and Second Galactic Senate, was the legislative body of the New Republic. It was modeled on the Galactic Senate of the First Galactic Republic, which was tranformed into the Imperial Senate during the era of the Galactic Empire. In 0 BBY, Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine announced the Senate's dissolution and allowed regional governors to rule their territories. In 4 ABY, the Galaxy saw the return of a democratic assembly of planets with the formation of the New Republic senate.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Endor, the Alliance to Restore the Republic founded the New Republic and restored the Senate as its principal governing body. With the end of the Galactic Civil War, the Republic replaced the shattered remains of the Empire as the dominant government of the Galaxy. At that point the Senate seat had relocated to Coruscant, before the invasion of the planet forced the body to retreat to Chandrila, where it remains today.

The Galactic Senate is located on the homeworld of first Chancellor of the New Republic Mon Mothma, Chandrila. The government as a whole is organized around this unicameral legislative assembly.

Powers
"Senators are notoriously unreliable, too, and yet they form the bedrock of our democratic system―Chancellor Mon Mothma"The Senate was the legislative and executive power of the New Republic. 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 Chancellor.

The Galactic Senate had member worlds from across the Galaxy. In the beginning, it was composed solely from planets of inner planets, but a few Outer Rim worlds joined the Senate early on in its existence. The representatives within the Senate were chosen by the will of the people through democratic elections, and early Senate debates about the proposals to correct the injustices of the Empire were greeted with positivity due to the ability to openly express opinions without fear of the Empire. The Senate oversaw the rehabilitation of worlds across the galaxy by directing resources towards cleaning up polluted worlds and providing reparations for species that had been enslaved by the Empire.

The Senate also contained committees such as the Committee for Imperial Reallocation, which was charged with redistributing the resources of the Empire, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which at one point investigated the activities of crime syndicates and early rebel insurgencies in its frontier regions.

Organization
The Senate was headed by the Chancellor alongside the Chairman of the General Ministry. 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, but may change regarding the represented volume of population. Affiliate members were represented on Chandrila 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 19 ABY, there were nearly 1000 senators, with each representing 50-200 worlds.

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. When the Senate met as a committee of the whole, it was sometimes referred to as a Senate Assembly.

Councils were appointed bodies with autonomous decision-making and appropriation authority over some segment of government operations outside the Senate proper (for example, the Defense Council, which oversaw the New Republic Defense Force). Commissions were voluntary bodies with an advisory capacity only. They could prepare reports on issues of concern for presentation to the Chancellor, to the Minister of State, to New Republic High Command, or to the general membership; schedule and conduct hearings; and contract for independent research.