The North Carolina General Assembly is the bicameral legislature of the state government of North Carolina. The legislature consists of two chambers: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Vested with the state's legislative power by the Constitution of North Carolina, the General Assembly meets in the North Carolina State Legislative Building in Raleigh.
The House of Representatives has 120 members, while the Senate has 50 members. All represent districts and are elected to serve two year-terms. There are no term limits for either chamber. Together, the bodies write the state laws of North Carolina—known as the General Statutes and create the state's biennial budget. Most legislation is subject to the potential veto of the governor, though such a veto can be overruled with a three-fifths majority vote. The legislature can also impeach state officials and propose constitutional amendments.
Both chambers are currently controlled by the Republican Party, but they only hold veto override power in the Senate, holding 1 seat shy of a supermajority in the House of Representatives.
History Colonial period
In 1663, King Charles II of England granted a royal charter to eight lords proprietor to establish the colony of Carolina in North America. Under the terms of the charter, regular management of the colony was to be overseen by a governor and a council. An assembly consisting of two representatives from each county elected by freeholders was to have the power to write laws with the approval of the governor, his council, and the lords proprietor. This system of government was ultimately never implemented in the area which eventually became North Carolina. In early 1665 the lords proprietor promulgated a constitution for Carolina, the Concessions and Agreement. The document provided for a governor, a council of six to 10 men chosen by the governor with the consent of the lords, and an elected assembly. It also stipulated that the assembly's consent was required for taxes to be levied and that vacancies in the assembly were to be filled by elections called by the governor and his council. A new royal charter for Carolina was granted in 1665 and required the forming of an assembly.
After receiving his commission, Carolina Governor William Drummond summoned a body of freemen who selected 12 deputies to represent their interests. Together with the governor and his council, the deputies served as a provisional legislature for Albemarle County and eventually was named the General Court and Committee. It held its first meeting in the spring of 1665. When the governor and his deputy were absent, the assembly would designate a president or speaker to lead its sessions. Approximately two years later, the temporary assembly divided the county into four precincts: Chowan, Currituck, Pasquotank, and Perquimans. The freemen in each precinct were to convene at the beginning of every year to elect five representatives for the permanent assembly. The first election occurred on January 1, 1668.
While required to abide by the Concessions and support the interests of the lords proprietor, the assembly was powerful and largely left to manage itself. It decided the length and locations of its own sessions, when it adjourned, and its own quorum. It wrote laws, levied taxes, created courts, incorporated towns, determined the sites of ports and forts, regulated the militia, allotted land, and granted citizenship. Laws passed by the legislature held effect for 18 months and were sent to England for ratification by the lords. The lords could refuse to ratify laws and let them expire. From 1692 to 1712, North Carolina and South Carolina were organized as one Province of Carolina. The colony had one governor but North Carolina retained its own council and assembly. After 1731, the members of the governor's council were chosen by the Privy Council and were responsible to the British king.
During the period of royal control after 1731, North Carolina's governors were issued sets of secret instructions from the Privy Council's Board of Trade. The directives were binding upon the governor and dealt with nearly all aspects of colonial government. As they were produced by officials largely ignorant of the political situation in the colony and meant to ensure greater direct control over the territory, the instructions caused tensions between the governor and the General Assembly. The assembly controlled the colony's finances and used this as leverage by withholding salaries and appropriations, sometimes forcing the governors to compromise and disregard some of the Board of Trade's instructions. Particularly after 1760, the lower house increasingly viewed itself as the representative of the colonists' interests in opposition to the British Crown's interests as relayed by the governor and the council. Frequent tensions between Governor Josiah Martin—a firm supporter of the secret instructions—and the assembly in the 1770s led the latter to establish a committee of correspondence and accelerated the colony's break with Great Britain.
Revolutionary period In 1774, the people of the colony elected a provincial congress, independent of the royal governor, as the American Revolution began. Inspired by the structure of the lower house of the General Assembly and organized in part by House Speaker John Harvey, its purpose was to chose delegates to send to the Continental Congress. In addition to this, the congress adopted punitive measures against Great Britain for its Intolerable Acts and empowered local committees to govern the state as royal control dissipated. A second congress in April 1775 adopted additional economic measures against Great Britain, leading Governor Martin to dissolve the colonial assembly before fleeing the colony. There would be five provincial congresses. The fifth Congress created the first constitution in 1776. This constitution was not submitted to a vote of the people. The Congress simply adopted it and elected Richard Caswell, the last president of the Congress, as acting governor until the new legislature was elected and seated.
Per the terms of the constitution, North Carolina had a government with a separation of powers divided amongst executive, legislative, and judicial branches, though the legislative branch retained the most power and wielded significant influence over the others. The General Assembly, vested with the state's legislative power, was made a bicameral body, consisting of a Senate made up of one member from each county in the state and a House of Commons with two members from each county and one from each of several specially designated "borough towns". As such, the size of the legislature would grow with the addition of new counties and borough towns. Property requirements stipulated that House members had to own at least 100 acres and senators at least 300 to serve. In order to vote in a Senate election, one had to own at least 50 acres, while participants in House elections only had to pay taxes. No restrictions were placed on race for the purposes of suffrage. Elections for members of both houses were to beheld annually, and each house was responsible for electing its own officers. The assembly was responsible for electing the governor, the Council of State, the state treasurer, the secretary of state, the attorney general, officers of the state militia, and all judges. There were few limits on its powers.
The first North Carolina General Assembly was convened on April 7, 1777, in New Bern, North Carolina. Due to the outbreak of hostilities and in an effort to present itself to the public, North Carolina's legislature met in various locations throughout the war, though most often in New Bern, Halifax, and Hillsborough. The assembly initially organized the state's war effort and structured the militia itself and directed oversight through committees, though when this proved unsatisfactory it created separate boards with supervisory authority. In September 1781, British forces captured the governor and several members of the General Assembly during a raid on Hillsborough. The war ended in 1783.
Antebellum period and Civil War
The General Assembly's primacy in state government was largely unchallenged until 1787, when the North Carolina Court of Conference found a state law in violation of the state constitution in the case Bayard vs. Singleton and overturned it, thus helping to establish a principal of judicial review. In 1791, the General Assembly appointed a commission to designate a permanent seat of state government, and the following year the legislature fixed the seat at the planned city of Raleigh. Construction of a North Carolina State House began in Raleigh in 1792 and became the meeting place for the General Assembly in 1794. It was enlarged in 1820 and burnt down in 1831. The legislature convened in the Governor's Palace in the interim and briefly considered relocating their seat before appropriating money to erect a new capitol in Raleigh. The North Carolina State Capitol was completed in 1840.
In 1834 the General Assembly voted narrowly in favor of a measure to establish a convention to amend the state constitution. The subsequent convention in 1835 offered significant changes to the state's constitution which were ratified in a popular referendum. Amendments set the number of senators at 50 and the number of commoners in the House at 120. Borough towns were terminated. Senate districts were no longer required to be limited to individual counties, but instead be coterminous with which counties were to be included in them and based on a judgement of approximate wealth measured by tax receipts. Sessions for the legislature were changed from annual to biennial and the terms of legislators were lengthened accordingly to two years. The office of governor was also made popularly elective. A new constitutional amendment process was also established, whereby the legislature could by a two-thirds majority vote convene a convention or could propose amendments subject to popular referendum after passing them in succeeding sessions after first a three-fifths and then a two-thirds majority vote. Suffrage for the purposes of legislative elections was limited to white men. In 1857, property requirements for qualifying to vote in Senate races were abolished.
In May 1861, at the urging of the governor, the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a convention to consider seceding from the United States. Later that month the convention met in Raleigh and adopted an Ordinance of Secession and adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States. The convention met several times from then until November 1862, during which time it served as a transitional government for the state, superseding the authority of the General Assembly and making changes to state law on its own. After the president of the convention declined to convene it to discuss issues of wartime speculation and extortion, authority returned to the state's other civil leaders and institutions. During the Civil War the General Assembly continued to meet in regular biennial sessions, but also convened in seven extraordinary sessions to address wartime issues.
Reconstruction era