Question

What is the difference between Parliament and legislatures?

Answer 1

Parliament is the term for the whole combination of lawmaking bodies, this usually includes a lower house, an upper house, and monarch or president. Each of these is typically required to grant assent to create a new Act of Parliament.

A legislature is a body for debating and passing laws and as such in the above example both the lower house and the upper house are, individually, legislatures. A legislature need not be part of a parliament and may be a sub-national lawmaking body or exist in a non-parliamentary country.