Its members were appointed by the governments of Germany's constituent states to represent their interests in the German parliament.

The Constitution of the German Empire required that both the Bundesrat and the Reichstag approve laws before they came into force.

The Bundesrat was responsible for the enactment of the laws, administrative regulations and the judicial resolution of disputes between constituent states.

Emperor Wilhelm I (r. 1871–1888) wished to rename the Bundesrat to the "Reichsrat", but his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, convinced him that the federal character of the Empire should continue to be emphasized.

[1] The Bundesrat combined legislative and executive powers in accordance with the constitution and imperial laws.

[2] Its legislative and executive functions were: The Bundesrat had no specifically enumerated military competence under the imperial constitution.

Bismarck's solution was similar to that of the German Confederation (1848–1866) in that the constitution he drafted assigned certain quasi-judicial tasks to the Bundesrat: After Alsace–Lorraine was given more autonomy in 1877, its Territorial Committee (Landesausschuss) made the laws for the formerly French region.

By way of comparison, the Weimar Constitution of 1919 limited the share of Prussian votes in the Reichsrat to a maximum of 40% (the clausula antiborussica, or anti-Prussian clause).

Precisely because the Bundesrat was an important instrument for Bismarck and emphasized the Empire's federalism, he wanted to enhance its position.

He thought of making the meetings public, but it is doubtful whether the move would have changed the fact that the people were more interested in the unitary (one-state) bodies such as the emperor and the Reichstag.

With the War Enabling Act, the Reichstag partially transferred its legislative co-determination rights to the Bundesrat.

Although the term "economic measures" was elastic, the Bundesrat made rather moderate use of the War Enabling Act.

[9] In the early days of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, on 10 November 1918, Friedrich Ebert, the chairman of the Council of the People's Deputies, which then exercised the rights of both the emperor and the chancellor, said that the Reichstag should not be reconvened but that there was no decision yet on its dissolution.

In light of the ongoing revolution, the Council saw no place for the Bundesrat as a combined executive and legislative body.

Ebert did not want to simply dissolve the Bundesrat out of fear of making enemies of the (by then also revolutionary) state governments.