Virgin Islands

Executive power rests with a Governor, elected with a Lieutenant Governor on a single ticket to a four-year term. A candidate must win a majority of the vote — if no ticket clears 50%, the territory holds a runoff, which is rare among the states. Governors are limited to two full consecutive terms, though they may run again after sitting one out. Until 1970 the governor was appointed by the President; the Virgin Islands Elective Governor Act of 1968 made the office popularly elected.

The Governor and Lieutenant Governor are the only territory-wide elected executives. Everyone else — the Attorney General, the commissioners who head the departments (Education, Health, Finance, Licensing & Consumer Affairs, Planning & Natural Resources, Public Works, Police, and the rest of the cabinet) — is appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the Legislature. That makes this a strongly single-executive government: unlike the 43 states that elect their attorney general, the VI Attorney General answers to the Governor, not directly to voters.

The Legislature of the Virgin Islands is unicameral — a single chamber of 15 members, all titled senators — making it one of only a handful of one-house legislatures under the U.S. flag (with Nebraska, Guam, and the District of Columbia's council). Seven senators are elected from the District of St. Croix, seven from the District of St. Thomas–St. John, and one at-large senator who must be a resident of St. John — a built-in guarantee that the smallest island always has a voice.

Senators serve two-year terms with no term limits, so the entire body stands for election at once every two years. It is a full-time, salaried legislature that convenes in regular session each year — by federal law on the second Monday in January unless the Legislature sets a different date — and sits in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas.

With one chamber, lawmaking is compact: a bill is introduced and numbered, referred to a committee for a public hearing, reported to the floor, and passed by a majority of senators present and voting. There is no second house, no conference committee, and no crossover deadline — the committee process and the Governor's veto are the main institutional brakes.

The Governor has 10 days (Sundays excepted) to sign or return a bill; an unreturned bill becomes law. If the Legislature's adjournment prevents a bill's return, the Governor gets 30 days to sign it or it dies — a pocket veto. The Legislature can override any veto, including line-item vetoes, with the votes of two-thirds of all 15 members (10 senators). These mechanics are not in a local constitution — they are spelled out in the Revised Organic Act, a federal statute.

The Governor appoints the entire cabinet and the Attorney General (with legislative consent), proposes the budget, may call the Legislature into special session limited to the subjects of the call, and holds a line-item veto over appropriations — the power to strike individual spending items while approving the rest, granted directly by 48 U.S.C. § 1575.

The deepest limit on the office is structural: the charter the Governor operates under is an act of Congress. Congress retains plenary authority over the territory under the Constitution's Territory Clause, so the ground rules of Virgin Islands government — the veto, the term limit, even the existence of the elected governorship — can be changed only in Washington, not in Charlotte Amalie.

Local justice runs through two tiers: the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, the trial court of general jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands, the territory's highest court, which heard its first cases in 2007. Justices and judges are appointed by the Governor with legislative consent. Since 2012, decisions of the VI Supreme Court are reviewable directly by the U.S. Supreme Court — the same path a state supreme court's rulings take.

Alongside the local courts sits the District Court of the Virgin Islands, a federal territorial court created under Article IV rather than Article III — its judges serve 10-year terms instead of life tenure. Its appeals go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.