Legislative / legislature
U.S. Naturalization Test (2025 Standard) glossary · Course Foundations
Definition
The branch that writes laws; the body that writes them.
Legislative / legislature in plain English
"Legislative" is just the fancy word for anything to do with making laws, and a "legislature" is the group of people whose job is to write and pass those laws. These are the elected officials the public chooses to debate ideas and turn them into official rules everyone has to follow. If you imagine the government as a company, the legislature is the department that writes the rulebook, while other parts carry the rules out or settle arguments about them. At the national level in the U.S., this law-writing body is called Congress.
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