Since when have specific laws been given cute names, for instance, the PATRIOT act? Is this a recent innovation, or does it go back further? Is this peculiar to America, or is it common elsewhere (I don’t think this happens in the UK, although I may be mistaken)?
The “Create a Catchy Acronym” thing is a fairly recent development, although I won’t say absolutely it’s never been done in the past. But in both the U.S. and the U.K., the draft new law nearly always begins with a couple of sections which give a formal descriptive name to the proposed law and state its legislative intent. The “formal descriptive name” has a long and dishonorable history of playing spin on the actual purpose of the law, as witness the Federal and state laws which denied recognition to gay marriages being called the “Defense of Marriage Act.” The PATRIOT Act as an acronym is in that tradition.
As a side note, the bill that created Lend-Lease during World War II was intentionally numbered H.R. 1776 when it was first proposed in the House of Representatives. If I’m not mistaken, the same number (in a 60-years-later Congress, to be sure) was assigned to the bill that became the PATRIOT Act.
According to Wiki, the PATRIOT act was HR 3162.
Thanks, friedo. Another urban legend that I unwittingly transmitted debunked! 
Laws have been referred to by the names of the people who introduced them for a long time. Think of the Smoot-Hawley tariff or the Sherman Anti-trust Act. It’s a helpful way of remembering them, since numbers are meaningless in and of themselves.
The New Deal Acts were known by their acronyms, however: the NRA, CCC, etc. on to infinity. The programs were more important than the legislators given the assignments to introduce them: they were the president’s programs, not Congress’s.
Nothing new to be seen here, keep moving.
Congressional acts have been named for things besides their sponsors long before the New Deal. Consider the famous Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and the Sedition Act (also of 1798.) And my personal favorite, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
Absolutely. I was just responding to PATRIOT ACT as an acronym. There may be earlier instances, though I can’t think of any offhand, but the practice became common only with the New Deal.
Besides its numeric designation, an American law can have up to three titles. For the sake of clarity, let’s call them the “formal title”, the “short title”, and the “popular title”.
The formal title is the actual title of the law, usually a rather dry descriptor stating what the law is intended to do. For example, the Sedition Act of 1798 was formally “An Act in addition to the act, entitled ‘An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States.’” (Catchy, huh?) The Kansas-Nebraska Act was formally “An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas.” The PATRIOT Act is formally “An Act to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.”
In modern times, the text of the law will often add a “short title”. The PATRIOT Act begins,
I don’t know when the custom of adding “short titles” to laws began.
Finally, the press and then historians will settle on a “popular title” for a law–the Sedition Act of 1798, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. If the authors of the law have done their job well, the short title may catch on as the popular title. They’ve come close in the PATRIOT Act–people usually refer to it by the short title acronym, but often elide the “USA” part of it.
The OP asks whether laws have been given “cute” names before, by which I presume he means names with acronyms that spell out another word. I can’t think of any earlier examples, although someone else may come up with one.
The concept of putting spin a law title, however, is certainly not new. The law which granted Hitler dictatorial power over Germany was formally titled (roughly translated) as “A Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich.”
Thanks all.
Of course, our laws have long since stopped needing a formal title for the legislation. At one time, such a designation helped define the laws involved, and would, in combination with the official description of where the passed law was recorded, allow someone to locate the text of the law if trying to look it up.
But we now codify everything we pass in the way of legislation (thank-you, Napoleon), so that all laws end up placed within what is, for lack of a better term, an outline of all laws of the jurisdiction involved.
Thus, section 802 of the USA Patriot Act (Public Law 107-56, meaning it was passed by the 107th Congress and was the 56th law enrolled by that Congress) actually can be found at Title 18, United States Code, Section 2331. Sometimes, an act will create a whole new section of the “outline” of a code, and be self-contained in that new portion. Other times, like is true with the Patriot Act, the additions and amendments get scattered all over the place.
What about RICO (1970), which Snopes say may have been named after a Mobster named Rico?
Oops, forgot link: http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/rico.asp
During the Civil War, Lincoln referred to Acts of Congress simply by date, as in, “Pursuant to the Act of March 3, 1863, I hereby…” You can usually figure out, in the context of the presidential proclamation or whatever, what the Act was about, but not always.
As a WAG, I’d say that acts began getting catchy names when a) Congress was passing a lot more of them, from the New Deal onwards, and b) when politicians became more aware of the PR benefits of adding such names.
The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction act was sometimes simply called Gramm-Rudman, which annoyed Hollings a bit. Eventually, when the act was frequently ignored and seemed to be a dead letter, he wrote an op-ed piece asking that his name no longer be attached to it in media reports, declaring, “I want a divorce!”
Snopes also points out that acronyms are a 20th century development:
So it’s very unlikely that the Congress of Lincoln’s time or Washington’s would have used this device in naming a law.
True, but the New Deal acts weren’t acronyms. NLRA and NIRA are not words. USA-PATRIOT takes it to a whole new level. When did congress first deliberately used an acronym for the “short name” of an act?