Partisan influences often enter into the districting of states for representation, the party in power trying to fix boundaries so as to ensure keeping their majority in the legislature.
Investigate and report on the following:
Number of members in the lower and upper houses of your legislature.
Qualifications for membership and term of office in each house.
Names of your own representative and senator.
Secure a map showing legislative districts of your state. Locate your own.
Whether representation in your legislature is proportional to population.
The "gerrymander": what is it, and has it been used in your state?
The legislature controls our lives at almost every turn.
It has control over the whole domain of civil law; [Footnote 2: See below, p. 437.] that is, it lays down the rules governing contracts, real and personal property, inheritance, corporations, mortgages, marriage and divorce, and other civil matters. It defines crime; that is, it prescribes those actions of the citizen which are to be punished by fine or imprisonment or death. It touches the property of the citizen not only by regulating its use, but also by imposing upon it a burden of taxation. Finally, it has control over the vast domain known as the police power, under which it makes regulations concerning public health, morals, and welfare, devises rules for the conduct of business and professions, and in other ways restrains the liberty of the citizen to do as he pleases. [Footnote 3: C.A. Beard, America Government and Politics,, p. 516.]