The Council of the Republic was the name of the upper house

Upper house

An upper house, often called a senate, is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house; a legislature composed of only one house is described as unicameral.- Possible specific characteristics :...

 of the legislature

Legislature

A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...

 of the French Fourth Republic

French Fourth Republic

The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic, which was in place before World War II, and suffered many of the same problems...

 (1946–1958). It was by replaced the Senate when the constitution

Constitution of France

The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and replaced that of the Fourth Republic dating from 1946. Charles de Gaulle was the main driving force in introducing the new constitution and inaugurating the Fifth...

 of the French Fifth Republic

French Fifth Republic

The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system...

 came into force.

History

The constitution of the Fourth Republic, which came into force in 1946, stipulated that parliament was bicameral. The upper house was named the "Council of the Republic" (as opposed to the Senate of the Third Republic

French Third Republic

The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...

) and was granted greatly diminished powers.

Role

The council did not have the power to make laws, which was the responsibility of the National Assembly. The council was mainly consultative, and bills were only given a single reading at the council before being passed.

However, it did share responsibility should the need arose to amend the constitution in matters regarding the election of the President of the Republic. A formal notice to the council was required to declare war.

Composition

Members of the Council were known as '"councillors" (conseiller) from 1946 to 1948, and then "senators" from 1948 onwards. The number of senators had to be between 250 and 320. Senators were elected by indirect universal suffrage: five-sixths were elected by communes

Communes of France

The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...

 and departments; the other one-sixth were elected by the National Assembly, the lower house. They served six-year terms.

President

The President was the presiding officer of the council.

Portrait		Name	Took office	Left office	Political Party
		Auguste Champetier de Ribes Auguste Champetier de Ribes Auguste Champetier de Ribes was a French politician and jurist.A devout Catholic, he was an early follower of Albert de Mun and social Christianity. Wounded in the First World War, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from the Basses-Pyrénées as a Christian democrat from 1924 to 1934...	27 December 1946	6 March 1947	MRP Popular Republican Movement The Popular Republican Movement was a French Christian democratic party of the Fourth Republic...
		Gaston Monnerville Gaston Monnerville Gaston Monnerville was a French politician and lawyer.The grandson of a slave, he grew up in French Guiana and went to Toulouse to complete his studies. A brilliant student, he became a lawyer in 1918 and worked with César Campinchi, a lawyer who later became an influential politician...	18 March 1947	4 October 1958	Radical