At the end of November, I attended the third of CLIG’s seminars on the US legal system. We were fortunate to have Rachelle Tilly, associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, who stepped in at the last minute and made an excellent presentation on US legislation. Our other speaker was Helen Bird, Information Services Manager at Kirkland & Ellis International LLP, who talked about the information resources available electronically.
The Overview
Rachelle discussed the basic legislative process, and how a bill becomes law, with some excellent slides and handouts.
The Constitution details the areas in which Congress has power to legislate, and those that are protected. The legislative process starts with a draft bill that is introduced into either the House of Representatives or the Senate. It is at this point that a bill will pick up its nickname. They can, for example, be named after the member of Congress who introduced the bill (the ‘Sarbanes-Oxley bill’), or after the subject matter of the bill (‘The Clean Water Act’). The bill will then be referred to an appropriate committee for detailed consideration and analysis. The Committee will either a) reject the bill, b) leave it to ‘die’, or c) revise it and pass it (known as ‘marking up’ the bill). If the Committee passes the bill, it is then ‘reported’ which means that the bill will be published with certain other more detailed information describing the purpose, scope and reasons for recommended approval, and the reported bill is placed on the legislative calendar.
Consideration of the bill takes place in each chamber of Congress, and amendments can be made at this time. Once the bill is approved in one chamber it is passed to the other chamber. If the other chamber passes the bill but makes significant amendments the bill will usually be sent to a ‘conference committee’ of members from both chambers for reconciliation. The reconciled bill must be approved by both the House of the Representatives and the Senate in the same form before it can finally be presented to the President for signature. If the President signs the bill it becomes law. If he does not sign it within 10 days while Congress is in session the bill still becomes law, but if Congress is not in session the bill ‘dies’. The President may also veto the bill and send it back to Congress with in explanation of any objections, but Congress can still pass it with a two-thirds majority vote.
When a bill is passed, it becomes law and is initially published as a ‘slip law’ (i.e. in pamphlet form, usually available two to three days after enactment). It is later ‘codified’ in the United States Code (USC), the official government publication of the law.
Rachelle also spoke about Congress’ power to delegate some of its law-making authority to federal agencies, usually to facilitate the development of new rules or to amend existing law through secondary legislation. Proposed rules go through their corresponding legislative process, which includes public review, and if passed will ultimately be published in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
The Electronic Resources
Helen Bird, our second speaker for the evening, provided an overview to the resources available for researching legislative material. General legal information sources include:
American Law Sources Online (ALSO) http://www.lawsource.com/also
Legal Information Institute (Cornell University) http://www.law.cornell.edu
American Bar Association http://www.abanet.org/lawlink
US Law Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov
Law Library Resource Exchange (LLRX) http://www.llrx.com/resources7.htm
The texts of bills are freely available at the Thomas Legislative Information site at http://thomas.loc.gov
Helen also discussed ‘unannotated’ and ‘annotated’ versions of the US Code: the ‘unannotated’ Code is statutory law only, and the ‘annotated’ Code is statutory law plus references to relevant case law – a lawyer will probably find the annotated Code more useful on a day-to-day basis. The USC is ‘codified’ every six years and printed by the US Government Printing Office. This basically means that every six years, laws that have been passed are classified by broad subject matter into 50 titles and published. In between these editions annual cumulative supplements are published to present the most current information. The official version of the USC is available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/legislative.html
The USC is also available freely on the internet at:
Findlaw http://findlaw.com/casecode/ (also includes access to the Code of Federal Regulations)
Cornell Law Library http://www.law.cornell.edu/statutes.html
Annotated versions of the USC, known as the USCA, are only available through commercial fee-based services:
CCH Croner http://cch.com
Westlaw http://westlaw.com
Lexis-Nexis http://www.lexis.com
As an information professional that works mainly with UK jurisdictions, I found this seminar extremely useful. In the past I have been asked about federal legislative law and I have felt a little unsure of how the system works or where to go to find information. The overview of the US legislature provided by Rachelle has given me a good grounding in how federal law is enacted, and Helen’s reference list of websites has made me feel more confident about researching this area of law.
Jas Breslin, Kendall Freeman
- December 2003