Diet (legislature)

Diet (legislature), term applied to the legislature of certain states or nations. The term is commonly used as the English name for the legislatures of several foreign countries.

The term diet for a government body originated in the Frankish tribal councils. The princes and nobles, both clerical and secular, of the Holy Roman Empire met in an imperial diet called the Reichstag. By 1300 this body had acquired three principal components: the electors (who elected the king), the princes and nobles, and the town delegates. Among the most important sessions of the Reichstag were the diets of Worms (1521), Speyer (1529), and Augsburg (1530), all with the primary aim of suppressing the Reformation. By the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), the diet became no more than an assembly of ambassadors of the German princely states and had little power. The national assembly of Japan, established in 1889, is also called the Diet.