what was the most powerful lawmaking body in the roman republic
Constitution of the Roman Republic In Roman constitutional law, the assemblies are a sovereign authority, with the power to enact or reject any law, confer any magistracies, and make any decision.[4] In fact, with a single law, they held the authority to override the norms and precedents of the Republic as well as ancient laws long unchanged.[35] There are two necessary components to any assembly: (1) the convening magistrate and (2) the citizens in the assembly itself. Assemblies did not participate or discuss matters laid before them, they heard the speakers put forth by the presiding officer. And after such discussion, the presiding officer could call for a direct up or down vote.[36] Without a magistrate, there would be nobody to legally call upon the assembly; and without the citizens, there is naught but a magistrate.
Representative democracy The Roman Republic was the first government in the western world to have a representative government, despite taking the form of a direct government in the Roman assemblies. The Roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries,[7] and today's modern representative democracies imitate more the Roman than the Greek models because it was a state in which supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and which had an elected or nominated leader.[8] Representative democracy is a form of democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives as opposed to a direct democracy, a form of democracy in which people vote on policy initiatives directly.[9] A European medieval tradition of selecting representatives from the various estates (classes, but not as we know them today) to advise/control monarchs led to relatively wide familiarity with representative systems inspired by Roman systems.