Let’s say that I, freshman Missouri state representative Hey Homie (L-Viburnum), within my first few weeks in office, introduce a bill: drivers can not be pulled over and/or ticketed for exceeding the school zone speed limit on days when there is no school*.
Not being a lawyer, there would be no way I could possibly write the bill in sufficient Legalese that it would pass muster. So would I have a law library and law clerks at my disposal to put pen to paper for me? Would I just introduce it in plain English and assume that the Legalese would get hammered out in committee? Or would I have to employ the writing technique that got me through college (“Fake it 'till you make it.”) and try my best at Legalese?
*This hypothetical is based on something that actually happened to a friend of mine (in Missouri). On a weekday afternoon during school season, he got ticketed for going 35 in a school zone, with the lights flashing and all that. My friend argued that the lights obviously operate on some kind of timer and come on every weekday during school season between 3:15 and 3:50, but since there was no school that day (teacher conferences or whatever), he did not commit a crime. The cop argued that the lights were flashing, it was Tuesday, and it was 3:30, and the sign says “weekdays between 3:15 and 3:50”; thus, he committed a crime, and told my friend to take it up with the judge, which he regretfully did not do.
Every legislature has non-partisan attorneys that draft legislation so it correctly captures what the legislator wants to do in a way that conforms with the appropriate codification of laws.
In San Juan, you hire ME :D. Did that for 12 years.
In a majority of US legislatures, a dedicated Legislative Services/Research Office or Committee will have those resources to assist the members with preparing the properly cited, formatted bill, and preferrably to check and advise if the proposal was already overturned in court last year. Committee chairs and ranking members may also have the committee staff available and the presiding officers and majority/minority leaders will have their own which they may share with caucus members. These vary depending on the Legislature’s size and budget of course – Vermont may have one FTE staffer for every five in California.
For what it’s worth, traffic signals must be obeyed, regardless of the absence or presence of the hazard to which the signals are addressed. For example, even if a street is closed for construction, you still have to stop at a stop sign before crossing that street.
As for your specific question, any legislator can write up any bill in any terms he likes, which then gets submitted to a committee or a subcommittee, which hammers the language into muster.
Even that sometimes fails to be sensible. Texas passed a law a few years ago, banning the recognition of “anything that resembles a marriage”, which was signed by the governor before anyone saw that it bans all marriages…
shrug I was a legislative aide in Florida. Not sure where you want me to pull a cite from, since that isn’t the sort of thing legislators like to bring up.
Those (and the Uniform Law Commission and CSG’s Suggested State Legislation [disclosure: I worked with people in that program 2009-2012]) still have to be rendered into the proper format and cites for the particular state’s Code.
ANYONE can bring a first draft to the legislator. He/she has to actually initiate the processing.
Are you questioning that it is very common to start with a lobbyists’s proposed language, or questioning whether it is so common as to be described by “invariably”?
In my experience with two state governments, it is very common. But I’ve never seen a study done to quantify this, nor am I sure how you’d design such a study.
More specifically, reference to my post above, and correcting ambiguity, be careful you don;t write the law like this Subsection B, an amendment to the Constitution of the State of Texas, enacted in 2005,:
“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”
Yes, I’m questioning the word “invariably,” as in the implication that 95% or more of legislation starts with a draft from a lobbyist. Surely there has to be some way of demonstrating that legislators almost never have their own concepts or proposals for legislation.
I should add that I was thinking about the question as posed by the OP, in which the legislator has an idea that he wants to pursue, but needs help drafting it. Obviously he doesn’t need to call AAA (or some other lobbying organization) first to turn his idea into a draft bill that would then be reviewed, edited, or cleaned up by any committee or counsel. (I’m not talking about the fact that it is a good idea to try to get lobbying organization on-board with the idea – that’s good politics, but not needed for the technical work of putting pen to paper.)
Now, if AAA had this idea (as opposed to the legislator), it is very likely that they would provide a draft to the legislator. That’s not in doubt at all, but that isn’t what the OP asked.
A frequent situation is in the case of a local law a citizen or group of citizens from the East Westville district, petitions their legislator to do something to, say, appropriate for a new freeway exit, do something about the fish dying in the river, or locate a new school, or to address some other problem they have. The legislator or an assistant takes notes and on the legislator’s instructions a staffer sits with the committee or OLS or external counsel to create a draft that can be filed officially.
I can’ emphasize that last bit enough – you can’t just file any back-of-the-napkin sketch at the Clerk of the Chamber, there are constitutional and rules-of-the-Chamber form and content requirements for what will even be accepted, numbered and referred to “reading” and to committee for hearing.
Now, with general laws you begin getting into the petitioners being larger organized entities. The State of X Medical Association, or your local network of Chrysler dealers, will certainly be able to avail themselves of hired counsel and a national lobbying group to show up with both their petition and a ready-baked draft bill. The Council of Cooperative Local Sourced Organic Bakeries, OTOH , may be closer to the residents of East Westville, just a couple of their smarter members writing a good proposal that still has to be cleaned up. And of course the professional full-time lobbying firms will be in the legislator’s hair week in and week out.
In that sense, yes, much of what a legislator files originated at one point with someone calling/writing/visiting and bringing up “Hey, Dave, something should be done about XYZ, maybe do ABC?” Sometimes casually, sometimes more formally, it can be your neighbor or your paperboy and it can be SEIU or the NRA.
And at the opposite end of the political spectrum, New York enacted a gun control law last year which, in its original text, would have prohibited some on-duty police officers from carrying firearms.
These examples show why it’s best to leave law writing to a professional. Or better yet, a few professionals so they can fix each other’s mistakes.
Yup, jtur88 and** Little Nemo** are right. “Hurry up and DO SOMETHING!!!” legislation is the bane of staffers across the land. Elected officials do NOT want to hear the words “But, sir, are you sure about this…” from some nonelected peon hired because he had much book larnin’
Of course, the day after they are all going “HOW COME NOBODY WARNED ME ABOUT THIS?!?!?!!” as wr bite our tongues and try to not roll our eyes.
