Popular Names Short Names

LAW LIBRARY JOURNAL Vol. 105:1 [2013-1]

Renata E.B. Strause, Allyson R. Bennett, Caitlin B. Tully, M. Douglass Bellis, and Eugene R. Fidell, in “How Federal Statutes Are Named” (Law Library Journal Vol. 105:1[2013-1]

Public Laws

The first bill signed into law by President George Washington was the Act of June 1, 1789, ch. 1, 1 Stat. 23 (An Act to Regulate the Time and Manner of Administering Certain Oaths). The Library of Congress estimated in 2005 that, through the 108th Congress, 44,291 laws had been enacted (not counting private laws and simple resolutions). Chris Sagers, A Statute by Any Other (Non-Acronomial) Name Might Smell Less Like S.P.A.M., or, The Congress of the United States Grows Increasingly D.U.M.B. 11 n.80 (2008), https://works.bepress.com/chris_sagers/1. The 109th to 111th Congresses added another 1325 public laws, for a total of 45,616. Our article does not address fed- eral legislation enacted prior to the Constitution, but popular name issues arise there as well. E.g., Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the formal title of which was “An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as the Freedom Ordinance.” The First Congress used the formal title when reaffirming it. Act of Aug. 7, 1789, ch. 8, 1 Stat. 50, 51. The Supreme Court has referred to the Ordinance variously as the Northwest Ordinance, the Ordinance of 1787, the Northwest Territory Ordinance, and even the Northwest Territories Ordinance (presumably reflecting the subliminal influence of the name of the Canadian federal ter- ritory). See, e.g., Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 100 (1985) (referring to the Northwest Ordinance); I.N.S. v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 983 n.18 (1983) (the Northwest Territories Ordinance); Norton v. Whiteside, 239 U.S. 144, 151 (1915) (the Northwest Territory Ordinance); Strader v. Graham, 51 U.S. (10 How.) 82, 94 (1850) (the Ordinance of 1787). The First Congress also referred to the Articles of War enacted by the Continental Congress in the first Articles of War enacted under the Constitution. Act of Apr. 30, 1790, ch. 10, § 13, 1 Stat. 119, 121 (“shall be governed by the rules and articles of war, which have been established by the United States in Congress assembled, as far as may be applicable to the constitution of the United States”).

Bills

One might assume that submission of the bill was timed to preserve its symbolically charged sequential number, but bills are not necessarily numbered in the precise order of arrival. In research- ing this article, we learned that it is possible to reserve a number for a bill. In each Congress since 1989, Rep. John Conyers has reserved H.R. 40 as the number for a bill to commission a study of the feasibility of paying slavery reparations to Áfrican Americans. The bill’s number refers to the forty acres that were promised to freed slaves (consulte más sobre estos temas en la presente plataforma online de ciencias sociales y humanidades). Reparations, John Conyers, Jr., U.s. Congressman, https:// conyers.house.gov (under “Issues” menu, select “Reparations”) (last visited Oct. 18, 2012). Typically, low numbers are held for major bills that are central to the leadership’s legislative program. The practice of referring to enacted laws by their bill numbers is not unique to the federal government. For example, Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, ch. 113, 2010 Ariz. Sess. Laws 450, as amended by Act of Apr. 30, 2010, ch. 211, 2010 Ariz. Sess. Laws 1070, is widely known as “S.B. 1070,” its bill number in the state senate, and was referred to as such by the U.S. Supreme Court throughout the recent decision invalidating large parts of the law. Arizona v. United States, 132 S. Ct. 2492 (2012). Voter initiatives often retain their “proposition” numbers in common parlance. E.g., Proposition 8 (codified at Cal. Const., art. I, § 7.5) (defining marriage as being only between a man and a woman); see also Perry v. Brown, 671 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2012) (invalidating Proposition 8).

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11. See Mary Whisner, What’s in a Statute Name?, 97 law. lIbr. J. 169, 170 n.10, 2005 law. lIbr. J. 9, n.10. (“Most of us just aren’t wired to remember strings of numbers and abbreviations.”). A related phenomenon may be seen in the work of the other branches. Thus, cases have long received docket numbers, although no one cites them that way (except perhaps for cases in the Supreme Court’s minuscule original jurisdiction, e.g., “Orig. No. 138” (South Carolina v. North Carolina, 552 U.S. 1254 (2008)), and even then only among those who follow the Court very closely). Instead, cases overwhelmingly tend to be known by the names of the parties. Some of course are sufficiently important and well-known that a single party’s name is all that is needed to signify the case, as in “Roe,” “Roe contra Wade” (véase legalización del aborto en Estados Unidos y otros países, planificación parental, derechos reproductivos, derechos reproductivos de la mujer, historia de la justicia reproductiva y políticas sobre el aborto), 410 U.S. 113 (1973); “Miranda,” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966); “Brown,” Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954); “Erie,” Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938); or “Marbury,” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803). Cases may also acquire the judicial equivalent of a “popular name” through judicial and scholarly usage. Examples include “The Steel Seizure Case,” Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952); “The Nazi Saboteurs Case,” Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942); “The Sick Chicken Case,” A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935); “The Slaughter-House Cases,” Butchers’ Benevolent Ass’n of New Orleans v. Crescent City Live-Stock Landing & Slaughter-House Co., 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873); and “The Dartmouth College Case,” Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 518 (1819). These are examples of what the Bluebook describes as “established” popular names. the blUebook: a UnIform system of CItatIon 91 (19th ed. 2010) (R. 10.2.1(d)) (citing The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883)) [hereinafter blUebook]. The Insular Cases, which (depending on whose view you accept) were either all decided in 1901, e.g., De Lima v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 1 (1901), or extend to cases decided as late as 1914, e.g., Ocampo v. United States, 234 U.S. 91 (1914), or even later, fall into a different but related category, as do in rem admiralty cases in which the name of a vessel may serve as the popular name for the case, even though the case may be little known outside the maritime bar, e.g., “The Hine,” The Hine v. Trevor, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 555 (1867); “The Genesee Chief,” The Propeller Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, 53 U.S. (12 How.) 443 (1852). Overall, many of the “popular names” of cases “are quite obscure, ‘popular’ only in the broadest sense of the term. In recent years, the use of ‘popular names’ has declined precipitously, and very few new cases are being added to the list” found in Shepard’s Acts and Cases by Popular Names: Federal and State. berrIng & edInger, supra note 10, at 108.

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At times a researcher may have only the popular name of an act of Congress. This can make the text of the statute very difficult to find, since popular names vary in type, and until the second decade of the twentieth century, none were included in the acts themselves. Many, but not all, of the popular names are included in various popular name indexes. Besides being incomplete, those indexes may refer you only to much-amended compilations of the actual laws rather than to original versions, or perhaps only to the original version of a law when you are looking for the updated text.

To catch any nondescriptive names that may have been enacted into early laws that were subsequently repealed (and therefore would not appear in the official popular name table), it may be useful to review the Statutes at Large from 1789 through, somewhat arbitrarily, the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937.35

Table of Popular Names

The Table of Popular Names is a helpful guide maintained by the congressional Office of the Law Revision Counsel to accompany the official edition of the United States Code. The official table is an alphabetical list of both enacted short titles and popular, but often unenacted, names of acts of Congress. The vast majority of the thousands of names included in that table are what we view as descriptive names —the Energy Policy Act of 1992 or the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 200429— that is, the name of the legislation communicates key information about its content, but without any particular political spin. The rise of these short titles coincided with the increased tempo of federal legislation in the twentieth century and with the professionalization of legislative drafting.

The version of the popular name table made available on the Office of the Law Revision Counsel web site “is based on the 2006 edition of the Code and a preliminary version of the Table Supplement V to that Edition”. About ten years ago, the Office of the Law Revision Counsel decided to review the popular name table, which had grown over the decades, and eliminate those entries that did not have statutory or at least some sort of congressional authorization, but they soon discovered that few laws would remain if that were the criterion for retention. They therefore left in those that had any sort of currency, even if only in the academic or popular press. Interview by Douglass Bellis with staff of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (Feb. 17, 2012).

Statutes at Large

Federal statutory naming conventions

“At first, there were no short titles and no official names for acts of Congress other than “long” titles, such as “An act to provide for the safe-keeping of the Acts, Records, and Seal of the United States, and for other purposes.” In 1845, federal laws were arranged as “chapters” in the Statutes at Large, which is still the most authoritative source for acts of Congress in the form in which they were enacted.37

The arrangement in the Statutes at Large seems to imitate the then contemporary practice in Great Britain, where a “statute” consisted of all the acts of one Parliament, and each act was a chapter in the statute.38 As in Britain, the earliest acts of Congress were cited by long title and date of enactment, and perhaps to the Statutes at Large. This is still an acceptable form of citation, although often a United States Code citation is added, which has the advantage of allowing the reader to see an updated version of the law.

Beginning in 1901, a new system for identifying acts of Congress was used in addition to the Statutes at Large chapter numbers, and each law passed during a particular Congress was numbered sequentially, with separate lists for “public” and “private” laws. In 1957, the public and private law numbering system won out and the “chapter” approach was discontinued.40 This system provided an unambiguous and shorter means of referring to an act of Congress, but gave no information about the content of the legislation.41

Some early acts of Congress had popular names, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts,42 which are remembered today for the serious political controversy they sparked. Popular names typically described the legislative content, but had no official status.43 They were not included in the act itself, which is why the long title continued to be used until well into the twentieth century, when the almost universal inclusion of formal short titles in acts of Congress all but rendered the older, but still technically correct, form of citation superfluous.

Early Congresses did not pass a great deal of legislation by current standards. The laws enacted by the first session of Congress occupy less than one hundred printed pages in the first volume of the Statutes at Large.44 Most chapters in that volume were short and dealt with a single topic.45 Because Congress was slow to exercise its full power to confer jurisdiction over federal question cases,46 there seems to have been little need to cite to federal statutes in early federal court cases. In any event, there was little trouble in doing so unambiguously, as there were so few of them.47

Eventually, though, there came to be more than one statute on a given topic. In practice, the year of enactment was added to the subject to distinguish one from another. An example of this can be seen with the Judiciary Act of 1789 (also known as the First Judiciary Act),48 the Judiciary Act of 1801 (also known as the Midnight Judges Act),49 and the Judiciary Act of 1802.50 The national conflict over tariffs and foreign trade gave rise to some of the relatively few popular names that we have from the early to mid-1800s. The Embargo Act (1807), also “dyslexically” known as the “Oh! Grab Me Act,”51 and the Force Bill (1833) reflect this. The growing disputes over slavery also provide examples, such as the Fugitive Slave Law and the Wilmot Proviso. Despite evidence of use in newspapers and legislative debates, these popular names nonetheless remained unofficial and off the statute books.55

The practice of using informal, unenacted names for acts based on topic worked out well enough into the nineteenth century (down through at least the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 -56). Most statutes during this period continued to have no name at all, even an unofficial one. For various reasons there seemed to be no need for them. Most federal law before the Civil War seemed of little interest to people in the United States, other than a few lawyers. Few citizens in a largely agrarian society were affected directly by it. Congressional action appears to have been mostly concerned with obtaining revenues through tariffs, organizing the burgeoning executive and judicial branches, and funding internal improvements. Matters affecting marriage, property, education, and regulation of local commerce, and virtually all criminal law —the sort of law that affects most people in their daily lives— were exclusively the province of state rather than federal law.

37. See Resolution of Mar. 3, 1845 (Res. No. 10), 5 Stat. 798; morrIs l. Cohen & robert C. berrIng, how to fInd the law 186 (8th ed. 1983). See also generally, Mary Whisner, The United States Code, Prima Facie Evidence, and Positive Law, 101 law lIbr. J. 545, 2009 law lIbr. J. 30 (discussing the authority of different statutory publications).

38. Classification and Recording of Acts of Parliament, yoUr arChIves, https://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Classification_and_Recording_of_Acts_of_Parliament (last updated Sept. 30, 2012).

40. About Bills, Resolutions, and Laws, lexIsnexIs, https://www.lexisnexis.com/help/cu/Serial_Set /About_Bills.htm#pub (last visited Oct. 22, 2012).
41. Perhaps, however, the use of public law numbers in legislation relating to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is a sign of a return to more apolitical monikers? See the discussion supra note 16. Will the use of public law numbers come to supplant short titles that have become too long or tendentious for convenient use, or will they simply be employed by a law’s detrac- tors who do not want to cede any ground by referring to a law’s politically charged name?
42. Act of June 25, 1798, ch. 58, 1 Stat. 570 (An Act concerning Aliens); Act of July 14, 1798, ch. 74, 1 Stat. 596 (An Act in Addition to the Act Entitled “An Act for the Punishment of certain crimes against the United States”).
43. See, e.g., Act of Mar. 3, 1791, ch. 15, 1 Stat. 199 (known as the Whiskey Act of 1791); Act of Dec. 22, 1807, ch. 5, 2 Stat. 451 (known as the Embargo of 1807).
44. The seventy-six pages of laws enacted during the first session of the First Congress are found at 1 Stat. 23–98. Now many individual acts of Congress are at least that long and, cumulatively, the number of pages devoted to new laws in a given session is often in the thousands. The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, for example, takes up 629 pages. Pub. L. No. 110-234, 122 Stat. 923–1551.
45. The first volume contains 444 laws, enacted during the first five Congresses, averaging a little more than one-and-a-half pages per law. Only nine of the 444 statutes are ten pages or longer, and the only statutes longer than fifteen pages are the Tariff Act of 1789, the Judiciary Act of 1789, and the legislation establishing the Post Office.
46. See rIChard h. fallon, Jr., et al., hart & weChsler’s the federal CoUrts and the federal system 743–47 (6th ed. 2009).
47. An unscientific study of the oldest cases before the U.S. Supreme Court reveals that both attorneys (at least as reported) and Justices identified statutes both by their dates of enactment and by official long titles. See, e.g., Young v. Bank of Alexandria, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 384, 396 (1808) (referring to the “act of congress of February, 1801” and also to “the ‘act concerning the district of Columbia’”). Both methods appeared to produce sufficient clarity, although the example of an 1813 case that quotes a statute which refers internally to a different statute by its long title shows that the conventions, at least to modern eyes, could get messy. See The Aurora, 11 U.S. (7 Cranch) 382, 383–84 (1813) (“The act of 1st of March, 1809, expired with the session of Congress, on the 1st of May, 1810, on which day, Congress passed an act, (vol. 10, p. 186,) the 4th section of which enacted, ‘that in case either Great Britain or France shall, before the third day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts, as that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States, which fact the President of the United States shall declare by proclamation, and if the other nation shall not within three months thereafter so revoke or modify her edicts in like manner, then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eighteenth sections of the act, entitled “An act to interdict the commercial intercourse between the United States and Great Britain and France, and their dependencies, and for other purposes”….’”). On occasion, an unenacted but descriptive popular name was used as shorthand. E.g., In re Brinkman, 4 F. Cas. 145, 147 (S.D.N.Y. 1800) (No. 1884) (“The ninth section of the judiciary act of 1789 (1 Stat. 76, 77) declares that the district courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all crimes and offences that shall be cognizable under the authority of the United States…. [T]he act of congress of 1789, commonly called the ‘Judiciary Act’ gives to the district courts of the United States exclusive cognizance….”).

Perhaps the best-known case to make use of a short title is Dred Scott—several of the Justices referred to the Missouri Compromise Act by that name. See, e.g., Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 519 (1856) (Catron, J., dissenting). It appears as though the earliest reference to an act by the name of its sponsor is in a 1916 case citing to an 1890 law “usually known as the Wilson law.” Rosenberger v. Pacific Exp. Co., 241 U.S. 48, 50 (1916). 48. Act of Sept. 24, 1789, ch. 20, 1 Stat. 73.

49. Act of Feb. 13, 1801, ch. 4, 2 Stat. 89. 50. Act of Apr. 29, 1802, ch. 31, 2 Stat. 156. Later judiciary acts were known both as the “Judiciary Act of” a particular year and by secondary popular names, such as the Judicial Circuits Act (Act of July 23, 1866, ch. 210, 14 Stat. 209), the Evarts Act (Act of Mar. 3, 1891, ch. 517, 26 Stat. 826), and the Certiorari Act (Act of Feb. 13, 1925, ch. 229, 43 Stat. 936).

51. Act of Dec. 22, 1807, ch. 5, 2 Stat. 451. The Embargo Act of 1807 was known derisively as the “Ograbme” Act—embargo spelled backward—based on a political cartoon by Alexander Anderson. Alexander Anderson, “Ograbme, or The American Snapping-Turtle” (1807), reprinted in roger bUtterfIeld, the amerICan Past 51 (1947).

55. The Congressional Globe for Dec. 28, 1833, reported: “The bill to repeal the act, commonly called the ‘Force Bill,’ came up in order,” 23rd Cong., 1st Sess., Cong. globe 49 (1833); the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was referred to as such in an editorial published in the New York Times in 1860, The Fugitive Slave Law, n.y. tImes, Dec. 10, 1860, at 4; and the Wilmot Proviso appears in the New York Times as early as 1853, when it was referred to as such in a letter from Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, Letter of Daniel S. Dickinson in Reply to a Late Article in the Union, n.y. tImes, Sept. 17, 1853, at 3. 56. Act of July 1, 1898, ch. 541, 30 Stat. 544.

Statute Popular Names

In the nineteenth century, a parallel practice developed of naming some legislation for individuals. The names that resulted from this practice, like the subject-related names, were again not set forth in the law itself, but grew out of common parlance.

This method named the legislation after one or more members who sponsored it or were somehow related to it (normally as its proponents) in one or both chambers of Congress. The practice seems to have originated in Congress itself, where it likely was natural to identify a bill with its proponents. Perhaps it provided a convenient way to refer to bills as they were being considered. It may have evolved in imitation of the classical Roman system for naming laws after the consul or consuls who initiated them.57 The early American republic strongly identified with Rome, as the popularity of classical Greek and Roman architecture for public buildings and the statues of Washington wearing a toga attest.58 It may also have been influenced by a similar vogue for classical antiquity among the British, or at least the British Whigs, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Whatever the source, a similar custom of naming laws for their sponsors obtained in Britain.59 Since American lawyers were familiar with English cases and texts during the period,60 it might well be that this was the real source of the custom of referring to laws by the name of the sponsor.

57. Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome, at vi (Beryl Rawson ed., 1991) (citing as examples of this practice the les Papia Poppaea introduced by the consuls M. Papius Mutilus and C. Poppaeus Sabinus, and the legislation by Augustus bearing the name of his adoptive family, the leges Jueliae).

58. See Rob Atkinson, Reviving the Roman Republic: Remembering the Good Old Cause, 71 fordham l. rev. 1187, 1191 n.17 (2003).

59. A memorandum of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel prepared in relation to a Statute Law (Repeals) Bill indicates that before the introduction of official short titles in the 1840s: “Statutes of general importance had acquired short unofficial names, such as Jervis’ Act….” law Comm’n and Scottish law Comm’n, Statute law Revision: Fifteenth Report, draft statUte law (rePeals) bIll, 1995, Cm. 2784, ¶ 4.2, available at https://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/download_file/view/321. Examples of the unofficial names of British acts contemporaneous with the first fifty years of the republic include Burke’s Act (22 Geo. 3, c. 75) (1782) (Colonial Leave of Absence); Sturges Bourne’s Act (58 Geo. 3, c. 69) (1818) (Vestries); Aberdeen’s (Lord) Act (5 Geo. 4, c. 87) (1824) (Entail); and Scrope’s (Poulett) Act (6 & 7 Will. 4, c. 96) (1836) (Parochial Assessments).

60. See Brian J. Moline, Early American Legal Education, 42 Washburn l.J. 775 (2004) (describing the considerable influence of British legal education and texts on the training of American lawyers during the colonial era and early republic).

Federal Statutes

The “Popular Name” System

Of the acts of Congress before 1900, many more seem to have the sort of popular name based on individuals’ names, usually sponsors’ names, than popular names based only on subject matter. Toward the end of the period 1790–1900, and following that until about 1950, we see a number of instances where the common name combines a subject matter allusion with one or more legislators’ names.61 More and more laws were passed, and therefore there was an increased need to distinguish one from another. Using legislators’ names is not a satisfactory solution, just as previously using a subject matter allusion without a year would create ambiguity.62 The sheer volume of federal legislation had increased by this time. More than one act of Congress might therefore be named after the same particularly prolific or influential member. As a result, sometimes the acts would be called such things as the First and Second Morrill Acts.

Where ambiguity remains, there is often a reference to the topic covered as well, either as a noun modified by the adjectival sponsor’s name, such as the Steagall Commodity Credit Act, or in a parenthetical reference, such as the Carlisle Act (Internal Revenue). We thus see some blending of the two previously independent popular naming conventions.

By 1900, neither of the existing systems was sufficient to identify legislation unambiguously without a long formal citation. A new system was needed.

A similar problem had been faced in the United Kingdom.

61. E.g., LaFollette Hours of Labor Act, ch. 2939, 34 Stat. 1415 (1907); Steagall Stock Liability Act (Federal Reserve Act), ch. 6, 38 Stat. 251 (1913); Nolan Minimum Wage Law, ch. 174, 40 Stat. 960 (1918); Fletcher-Rayburn Securities Act of 1933, ch. 38, 48 Stat. 74. 62. For example, Congress enacted eight different Judiciary Acts before 1900, each of which is referred to as the “Judiciary Act of” the year in which it was enacted. The addition of the year, how- ever, did not solve the problem for the two Judiciary Acts of 1866, Act of July 23, 1866, ch. 210, 14 Stat. 209, and Act of July 27, 1866, ch. 288, 14 Stat. 306, the first of which is also referred to as the Judicial Circuits Act. See also Philip S. Bonforte, Pushing Boundaries: The Role of Politics in Districting the Federal Circuit System, 6 seton hall CIr. rev. 29, 38 (2009) (discussing the history of seven of the eight pre-1900 Judiciary Acts).

Sponsors Statute Names

Persistence of Informal Popular Names and Continued Transition to Sponsors’ Names

By the time of the Civil War, Congress members’ names had become the most common source of popular names. Still, like the other popular names, these names were not found in the acts of Congress themselves. They continued to be unofficial, though their use seems so general as to eclipse the official long title for all practical purposes, except in formal references in other acts of Congress.

For the latter half of the nineteenth century and during the first quarter of the twentieth, this practice of naming laws (if they had names at all —most still did not) for their proponents in Congress was the most common naming convention. As we might expect from the continuing salience of tariffs as a political issue, tariff acts were especially prone to having popular names. The 1846 Walker Tariff Act and the Wilson Tariff Act of 1894 are examples. This continued well into the twentieth century, as evidenced by the famous Smoot Hawley (Tariff) Act of 1930, which was also known as the Tariff Act of 1930. The Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 seems to have even had an official short title naming it the Tariff Act of 1922. This was one of the earliest American officially enacted short titles. Nonetheless, it appears still to have been more familiar to lawyers and others through its popular name (based on the names of its sponsors) than it was under its official short title.

Earlier, though, in 1918, there had been a spate of formal short titles (the earliest of which we are aware): the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act of 1918, the Third Liberty Bond Act of 1918,81 and the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Law. This may have been due to the growing influence on drafting of the Office of the Legislative Counsel, formally legislated into existence in 1919.

Short Title

The Triumph of the Enacted Short Title
By 1920 there were a number of laws with formal short titles: the National Prohibition Act; the Transportation Act, 1920; and the Merchant Marine Act, 1920. Some of these still had popular but unofficial names based on congressional sponsors or proponents.(87) As seen in these examples, a number of acts enacted around 1920 include the year following a comma rather than an “of.” We still see this practice in some laws, notably appropriations laws,88 but it did not seem to stick for most short titles, which have gone back to the “of” format when referring to the year.89 One wonders if it was part of a more general argument within the Office of the Legislative Counsel about the two alternative forms. For while the Office of the Legislative Counsel consensus seems to favor the “of” format for short titles, it favors the comma for a citation to a title of the United States Code. So we now more commonly see “title 5, United States Code” where we would once have seen “title 5 of the United States Code.”

Perhaps this was a Solomonic judgment to satisfy irreconcilable stylistic claims. Or perhaps use of the comma originated outside the Office of the Legislative Counsel and was gradually replaced by the “of” style.

That the late teens and 1920s mark the somewhat tardy advent of the official short title in American usage may not be coincidental —the Office of the Legislative Counsel gained formal status in 1919. The Office’s founders seem to have been much influenced by their British counterparts.90 The Office would have had some additional inducements to encourage the use of enacted short titles. There was no Lord Brougham’s Act dispensing with the need to cite previous acts by their long titles. At the same time, there were more, and longer, acts of Congress that copiously amended earlier acts.

Each amendment needed to be phrased with reference to the earlier act it was amending (consulte más sobre estos temas en la presente plataforma online de ciencias sociales y humanidades). Repeating the full long title citation for each amendment, especially as long titles were getting longer and longer, would surely be an unpleasant chore and not very conducive to the readability of the draft. Likewise, effective dates and other similar provisions keyed to the enactment of other statutes would be much less cumbersome if an official short title could be used. The formula for introducing a short title is “This Act may be cited as…,” evincing a concern not only about what the act was called in common parlance, but also about how a drafter could refer to it later or in other laws.91

But where in the bill the short title would appear was not immediately settled. At first, they were sometimes at the end of the bill and seem to have attracted little attention other than among lawyers (or perhaps drafters in the Legislative Counsel’s Office who put them in for technical reasons). In one case, the short title appeared in the definitions section.92 Many bills, probably including most of those drawn up outside the Office, continued to have no short title at all. And even those from within the Office often did not have short titles. This may have been because it seemed unlikely to the drafters that these bills would ever be amended or otherwise need cross-referencing. Even today, inclusion of a short title is still considered optional, though it has become the prevailing practice.93

87. For example, according to the popular name table, the National Prohibition Act was also known as the Volstead Act, and the Merchant Marine Act, 1920 was known as the Jones Act.
88. E.g., Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-80, 123 Stat. 2090; Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-117, 123 Stat. 3034; Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-83, 123 Stat. 2142.
89. E.g., Diesel Emissions Reduction Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-364, 124 Stat. 4056 (2011); Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-321, 124 Stat. 3515; Indian Arts and Crafts Amendments Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-211, tit. I, 124 Stat. 2258, 2258.

90. See Harry W. Jones, Bill-Drafting Services in Congress and the State Legislatures, 65 harv. l. rev. 441, 443 (1952) (“The form of organization of the Office of the Legislative Counsel of the Congress of the United States was, in part, patterned on the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury. At the hearings which preceded the establishment in 1918 of the congressional drafting office, Lord Bryce, then British Ambassador to the United States, made an unusual appearance, at committee invitation, to explain at length the status and technical responsibilities of the Parliamentary Counsel.”). 91. Even before the practice of including short titles took hold, there is evidence that drafters of later amendatory provisions found citing to an act’s long title unduly cumbersome. For example, a 1917 law authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to permit mining on public lands obtained under the provisions of a law enacted six years earlier. The 1911 act’s official title was lengthy: “An Act To enable any State to cooperate with any other State or States, or with the United States, for the protection of the watersheds of navigable streams, and to appoint a commission for the acquisition of lands for the purpose of conserving the navigability of navigable rivers.” Act of Mar. 1, 1911, ch. 186, 36 Stat. 961. Perhaps recognizing the difficulty of citing to the 1911 act by its official title, the 1917 act referred to it as “the Act of March first, nineteen hundred and eleven (Thirty-sixth Statutes, page nine hundred and sixty-one), known as the Weeks law.” Act of Mar. 4, 1917, ch. 179, 39 Stat. 1134, 1150. The citation to the 1911 law indicates that in common parlance—at least of the legislative drafters—it was known by the name of its House sponsor, John Weeks of Massachusetts. See Passing the Weeks Act, forest hIstory soC’y, https://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/WeeksAct/PassingAct.aspx (last visited Oct. 16, 2012). See also Office of the Law Revision Counsel, Table of Popular Names Explanation, https://uscode.house.gov/popularnames/popularnamesexplanation.htm.

92 (consulte más sobre estos temas en la presente plataforma online de ciencias sociales y humanidades). Railroad Retirement Act (Hatfield-Keller Railroad Retirement Act), ch. 868, § 1(m), 48 Stat. 1283, 1284 (1934) (“The term ‘Railroad Retirement Act’ means and may be used in citing this Act and subsequent amendments thereto.”).
93. Despite its prevalence, there does seem to be little in the way of formal guidance on the use of short titles in federal legislation. See Jones supra note 23, at 462–65 (discussing the rules for short titles in the Drafting Manual for the House of Representatives).

Formal Short Titles Waver in and out of Vogue from 1928 to the 1970s

From about 1928 to 1931, enacted short titles were rarer again, even for acts that ultimately were often cited, such as the Davis-Bacon Act;94 after that, they reappear. During this time, many acts continued to have unenacted popular names derived from their sponsors’ names. Perhaps because this was a relatively quiet time for new major legislation, there were few acts sufficiently likely to be constantly cited and amended.

During the New Deal era, we again see more formal and descriptive short titles.95 Some well-known New Deal laws did not have enacted short titles and are known instead mostly by their sponsors’ names.96 The New Deal, however, opened the door to official titles recognizing sponsors of the legislation with the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.97

(((Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act – Signed by President Roosevelt on July 22, 1937, the law provided loans to tenant farmers to purchase their land or new equipment. It was written and shepherded through the legislative process by Sen. John Bankhead of Alabama and Rep. John Jones of Texas, each the chair of his respective chamber’s committee with jurisdiction over the bill. The legislation carried a variety of descriptive names throughout the legislative process, but was titled the Bankhead- Jones Farm Tenant Act by an amendment offered by Sen. Barkley of Kentucky.98 The novelty of naming a law for its sponsors did not go unnoticed, and Oregon Senator McNary remarked “it is the first time in the history of legislation that an act has been designated officially in the act itself by the name of the author.”99

Senator McNary was wise to choose his words carefully —although our research can back up his statement that the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act was the first appearance of a sponsor’s name in the act itself, at least one earlier piece of legislation made official use of a popular reference to a bill’s sponsor. On March 1, 1911, President Taft signed legislation that allowed the federal government to purchase private lands to protect the headwaters of rivers and watersheds in the eastern part of the country. Although officially without a short title, the law was popularly known for its author, Republican Rep. John Wingate Weeks, of Massachusetts. Six years later, a provision in the 1917 Department of Agriculture appropriations bill granted the Secretary power to permit mining on “lands acquired under the Act of March first, nineteen hundred and eleven (Thirty-sixth Statutes, page nine hundred and sixty-one), known as the Weeks law.” We believe this is the first instance in which a sponsor’s name was incorporated into enacted legislation.))

After the flurry of legislative activity accompanying the New Deal, there were relatively fewer enacted short titles until a burst after the Second World War.103 Formal short titles were probably of more interest to drafters than to the general public, and it could be that the use of short titles continued to be confined mainly to bills that the Office of the Legislative Counsel expected to amend later. Well into the twentieth century, there were few such bills, and correspondingly few short titles. Of course, during this same time the Office of the Legislative Counsel by no means had a monopoly on drafting legislation. Many committees had their own drafters or relied on executive branch officials for drafts.

By the late 1940s, short titles, where they existed, frequently appeared as an undesignated first section immediately after the enacting clause, moving toward the current norm of having them at the beginning of the statute or title they name.104 But some short titles, like that of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, still appeared at the end of the act.105

As late as the 1960s, there seem to be few, if any, acts of Congress that con- tained more than one short title, or short titles applicable only to some portion of the act. Both of these practices would later become much more common. This may reflect the fact that short titles were still somewhat in the legislative drafting shad- ows as compared with other means of naming statutes. The more recent practice may also be indicative of a larger change in the legislative process—the advent of omnibus legislation. In the 1970s, Congress first began to consider some legislation with an expanded scope, often incorporating the work of multiple committees in the process.106 The percentage of the congressional agenda taken up by omnibus measures has increased steadily in the decades since and can be attributed, at least in part, to politically strategic legislative choices.107 The rise of short titles for titles or sections of larger pieces of legislation may reflect the political deals struck in crafting the omnibus legislation.108

As we have seen, and as the official popular name table often reflects, it seems common in the mid-twentieth century for even those laws that enacted their own short titles to also have popular titles that may have been more often used in common practice. These unenacted popular titles nearly always memorialize the name of the legislation’s sponsors. The Federal Boating Act of 1958,109 for example, was also commonly referred to as the Bonner Act,110 after the sponsor of the legisla- tion, Herbert Bonner, who served as chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries during the bill’s two-year consideration in the House.111

In the 1960s, we see a rebirth of the vogue for official short titles after something of a dry spell, during which legislation continued to have unenacted popular names, often very similar to what might have been a formal short title, had someone decided to enact one. The 1960s use of official short titles seems to be especially common in legislation that was thought of as either particularly impor- tant or likely to be amended later because of rapidly changing societal conditions, or both.112 We also see some short titles that omit the word act altogether.113 It seems that, particularly in the case of the Civil Rights acts, the public debate and later references to the acts began to use the short titles as the key means of identification.

In the 1970s we see the final triumph of the short title, which has pretty much lasted ever since. Even rather obscure acts, such as the Little Cigar Act of 1973,114 began to have their own official names. Moreover, people seem increasingly to have used those names in common parlance to refer to the bills and the laws they became. The short title had freed itself from being solely a technical device for drafters and had become a real name for the act to which it was attached. So much of a reflex has it become to include a short title that it seems some bill boilerplates must now include one. For example, we have the oddly named “_______ Act of _________,” which is the official short title of Public Law 111-226, enacted August 10, 2010.115

In part because of the drafters’ desire for convenience and brevity in amending older acts, Congress has retrospectively enacted popular names of some older acts into law as short titles. This occurred mainly after 1970, and may reflect the expanded role of the Office of the Legislative Counsel in the work of other com- mittees, such as the House Judiciary Committee, after passage of the Legislative Branch Reorganization Act of 1970.116 The most concentrated effort to enact the popular but unofficial names for legislation appears in the final section of the Hart- Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, which added enacted short titles to the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, the Webb-Pomerene Act, and the Wilson Tariff Act.117

94. Ch. 411, 46 Stat. 1494 (1931) (regulating wages for workers on government buildings). 95. E.g., Securities Act of 1933, ch. 38, 48 Stat. 74; Banking Act of 1933, ch. 89, 48 Stat. 162 (popu- larly known as “Glass-Steagall”); Farm Credit Act of 1933, ch. 98, 48 Stat. 257; Gold Reserve Act of 1934, ch. 6, 48 Stat. 337; Securities Exchange Act of 1934, ch. 404, 48 Stat. 881. 96. E.g., Wagner Peyser Act, ch. 49, 48 Stat. 113 (1933); Walsh Healey Act, ch. 881, 49 Stat. 2036 (1936) (amended to include “Walsh-Healey Act” as the short title by the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-355, § 10005, 108 Stat. 3243, 3409). 97. Ch. 517, 50 Stat. 522 (1937). 98. 81 Cong. reC. 6760 (1937); see also James G. Maddox, The Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act, law & ContemP. Probs., Oct. 1937, at 434, 446 n.26. 99. 81 Cong. reC. at 6760.

103. E.g., National School Lunch Act, ch. 281, 60 Stat. 230 (1946); Administrative Procedure Act, ch. 324, 60 Stat. 237 (1946); Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, ch. 120, 61 Stat. 136. The Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, is more commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, and has been referred to as such in subsequent legislation, see Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998, § 106(b), Pub. L. No. 105-258, 112 Stat. 1902, 1907, perhaps showing the tension between the lingering custom of popularly naming bills for sponsors on the one hand and the new system of formal short titles based on the subject of the bill on the other.

104. E.g., National School Lunch Act, ch. 281, 60 Stat. 230 (1946); Hospital Survey and Construction Act (Hill-Burton Act), ch. 958, 60 Stat. 1040 (1946); Klamath Welfare Act, ch. 160, 62 Stat. 92 (1948). The practice of including short titles in an undesignated first section occurred sporad- ically through the 1970s. E.g., Magnuson-Moss Warranty—Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, Pub. L. No. 93-637, 88 Stat. 2183 (1975); Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act), Pub. L. No. 94-265, 90 Stat. 331; Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Leadership Research Center Assistance Act, Pub. L. No. 95-270, 92 Stat. 220 (1978).

105. Ch. 724, § 21, 60 Stat. 755, 775. See also, e.g., Army Aviation Cadet Act (Reynolds Aviation Training Act or Sheppard Aviation Training Act), ch. 165, § 8, 55 Stat. 239, 240 (1941); Portal- to-Portal Act of 1947 (Gwynne Act), ch. 52, § 15, 61 Stat. 84, 90.

106. barbara sInClaIr, Unorthodox lawmakIng: new legIslatIve ProCesses In the U.s. Congress 154 (2012). 107. Id. at 154–55 (“During the 1980s the Democratic majority-party leadership some- times decided to package legislation into omnibus measures as part of a strategy to counter ideo- logically hostile Republican presidents, especially Ronald Reagan…. By packaging disparate and individually modest provisions on salient issues such as trade, drugs, or crime into an omnibus bill, Democrats sought to compete with the White House for media attention and public credit.”). 108. It may also simply be an easier story to sell to the media and to voters that Rep. Smith won a legislative victory by passing his “Saving Babies” law if, rather than simply incorporating the substantive provisions into the omnibus bill, a section of the larger measure is titled the “Saving Babies Act.” The same may be true for naming sections of legislation for crime victims, as is the case with many of the individually named subdivisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-248, 120 Stat. 587. See Jones, supra note 23, at 463 (discussing the “plethora of smaller acts, and thus short titles” within the Adam Walsh Act). 109. Pub. L. No. 85-911, 72 Stat. 1754. 110. See, e.g., Robert B. Jack, Note, Self-Policing of Ocean Shipping Conferences, 20 stan. l. rev. 724, 727 (1968) (“In 1961… Congress passed the Bonner Act….”). Another example of this convention is the act bearing the official short title the “Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959,” Pub. L. No. 86-257, 73 Stat. 519, which is listed in the popular name table as both the Landrum-Griffin Act and the Griffin-Landrum Act. Not all legislation with an enacted short title different from its popular name pays homage to its sponsor, however. The Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, ch. 469, 68 Stat. 454, was initially referred to by its public law number, as “PL 480.” President Kennedy then changed the unofficial name to the Food for Peace Act in 1961. The History of Food Aid, Us food aId and seCUrIty, https://foodaid.org/resources /the-history-of-food-aid/ (last visited Oct. 17, 2012). The act was amended to make “Food for Peace Act” an official short title in 2008. Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-246, § 3001, 122 Stat. 1651, 1820. 111. See generally 104 Cong. reC. 14287–315 (1958) (floor consideration of the Federal Boating Act of 1958 in the House of Representatives).

112. E.g., Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241; Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437; Food for Peace Act of 1966, Pub. L. No. 89-808, 80 Stat. 1526.
113. E.g., Food Additives Amendment of 1958, popularly known as the Delaney Amendment, Pub. L. No. 85-929, 72 Stat. 1784; Social Security Amendments of 1960, popularly known as the Kerr-Mills Social Security Act, Pub. L. No. 86-778, 74 Stat. 924. 114. Pub. L. No. 93-109, 87 Stat. 352.
115. Pub. L. No. 111-226, 124 Stat. 2389 (2010). See also 26 U.S.C. § 1 note (adding [sic] after noting the blank short title).

116. Pub. L. No. 91-510, 84 Stat. 1140. 117. Pub. L. No. 94-435, § 305, 90 Stat. 1383, 1397. The Hart-Scott-Rodino designation has its own interesting history as one of few pieces of legislation to break the two-name barrier. The law bears the names of Sen. Philip Hart (Mich.), Sen. Hugh Scott, Jr. (Penn.), and Rep. Peter Rodino (N.J.) (consulte más sobre estos temas en la presente plataforma online de ciencias sociales y humanidades). Rodino was chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Hart was chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee on Senate Judiciary, and Scott retired in 1976. In an interview for the Senate Historical Office Oral History Project, former Senate Judiciary Counsel Chuck Ludlam claimed that Rodino in fact “hated” the bill but allowed it to get through his committee, which was more liberal than he was, in exchange for having his name attached to the legislation. Chuck Ludlam, U.s. senate: oral hIstory (Dec. 10, 2003), https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/oral_history/Ludlam_chuck.htm (click on “Hart-Scott-Rodino” link).

118. A few statutes from the modern era are known by only one sponsor, such as the Antitrust Procedures and Penalty Act, Pub. L. No. 93-528, 88 Stat. 1706 (1974), known commonly as the Tunney Act, and the law commonly known as the Sisk Act, Pub. L. No. 90-174, 81 Stat. 531 (1967). See Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests Land Exchange Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-346, § 2(f)(2), 118 Stat. 1379, 1381, citing to Public Law 90-174 “commonly known as the ‘Sisk Act’.” The Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-435, 90 Stat. 1383, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, Pub. L. No. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338 (1999), had three names. 119. Pub. L. No. 96-480, 94 Stat. 2311. 120. Pub. L. No. 97-320, 96 Stat. 1469. 121. Pub. L. No. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745. 122. Pub. L. No. 102-550, tit. XV, 106 Stat. 3692, 4044 (1992).

Basado en la experiencia de varios autores, mis opiniones, perspectivas y recomendaciones se expresarán a continuación (o en otros lugares de esta plataforma, respecto a las características en 2026 o antes, y el futuro de esta cuestión):

123. Grant Fevurly, Davis v. Federal Election Commission: A Further Step Towards Campaign Finance Deregulation and the Preservation of the Millionaires’ Club, 81 U. Colo. l. rev. 627, 629 n.3 (2010). 124. Pub. L. No. 104-145, 110 Stat. 1345 (1996). 125. 142 Cong. reC. 10311 (1996) (statement of Rep. Dick Zimmer). 126. E.g., Jennifer’s Law, Pub. L. No. 106-177, tit. II, 114 Stat. 35, 36 (2000); Aimee’s Law, Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 2001, 114 Stat. 1464, 1539 (2000); Kristen’s Act, Pub. L. No. 106-468, 114 Stat. 2027 (2000). 127. E.g., Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, Pub. L. No. 103-322, tit. XVII, 108 Stat. 1796, 2038 (1994); Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007, Pub. L. No. 110-189, 122 Stat. 639; Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification Act, Pub. L. No. 110-314, § 104, 122 Stat. 3016, 3028 (2008). 128. Pub. L. No. 111-2, 123 Stat. 5. See also Kate Pickert, Lilly Ledbetter, tIme, Jan. 29, 2009, https://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1874954,00.html. 129. E.g., Lindbergh Kidnapping Act, ch. 271, 47 Stat. 326 (1932) (making interstate kidnap- ping a federal crime and named for the kidnapped and murdered son of Charles Lindbergh); Shirley Temple Act, ch. 676, § 13(c), 52 Stat. 1060, 1068 (1938) (exempting child actors from child labor laws and named for the child actress); Hiss Act, ch. 1214, 68 Stat. 1142 (1954) (prohibiting payment of government annuities to employees convicted of crimes and named for the convicted spy Alger Hiss).

A Rococo Efflorescence of Short Titles
Once the practice of including official short titles took hold, it began to be a means for political and other ends as well as technical ones. The tension between the two types of titles has continued to increase since then. A good short title to a professional drafter is short and dispassionately descriptive. To a politician it may be a means of selling the bill, embarrassing opponents, or honoring persons the politician wants to recognize. Since Congress is a political body as well as a legislative one, perhaps we should not be disturbed by this. On the other hand, in its extreme forms, it can interfere with the readability or usability of an act of Congress. Our search for the origins of these less dispassionate, official statutory names produced at least six overlapping categories of naming conventions: (1) laws named for the legislation’s sponsor, (2) laws named for the victim of a crime, (3) laws named in honor of someone as a laudatory gesture, (4) laws named after an individual whose behavior exemplifies what the law is intended to remedy, (5) laws with short titles that produce an abbreviation that is itself a word, and (6) a “left- over” category of laws named with overtly political descriptions, but which do not fall easily into one of the other categories.

Sponsors

Although the use of sponsors’ names to identify legislation has been common practice for more than a hundred years, the practice of including the names of sponsors in an enacted short title took root in the 1970s. With few exceptions,118 statutes are known by a hyphenated moniker that nearly always includes the last names of the primary House and Senate sponsors. Examples of this convention include the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980,119 the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982,120 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.121 A less common convention is the use of two names to indicate bipartisan support. The Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act, for example, was named for two House members: Democratic Rep. Frank Annunzio of Illinois and Republican Rep. Chalmers Wylie of Ohio.122 And even where the enacted short title remains descriptive, a piece of legislation may be referred to by its sponsors’ names as it moves through the legislative process, in order to emphasize its bipartisan nature to other members. Perhaps the clearest example of this practice is found in the history of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Commonly referred to as BCRA (pronounced “bick-rah”) by academics, the legislation was known as “Shays-Meehan” in the House—for Republican Christopher Shays and Democrat Marty Meehan—and as “McCain-Feingold” when it was considered in the Senate— for Republican John McCain and Democrat Russ Feingold.123

123. Grant Fevurly, Davis v. Federal Election Commission: A Further Step Towards Campaign Finance Deregulation and the Preservation of the Millionaires’ Club, 81 U. Colo. l. rev. 627, 629 n.3 (2010).

Victims

Another convention for federal statutes is to name the legislation after a victim of the particular ill the law addresses. Perhaps the most well-known example of this convention is Megan’s Law, which requires convicted sex offenders to register with local law enforcement upon release from incarceration.124 The federal law, along with its many state counterparts, is named for Megan Kanka, who was brutally raped and murdered in 1994 by a neighbor who had been convicted twice previously of being a sexual predator.125 Interestingly, most other laws named for female victims follow the convention of Megan’s Law and use the victim’s first name only, even though the identity of the victim is known.126 The more common con- vention for laws named for male victims, however, is to use both a first and a last name in the statute.127

124. Pub. L. No. 104-145, 110 Stat. 1345 (1996).
125. 142 Cong. reC. 10311 (1996) (statement of Rep. Dick Zimmer).
126. E.g., Jennifer’s Law, Pub. L. No. 106-177, tit. II, 114 Stat. 35, 36 (2000); Aimee’s Law, Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 2001, 114 Stat. 1464, 1539 (2000); Kristen’s Act, Pub. L. No. 106-468, 114 Stat. 2027 (2000).
127. E.g., Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, Pub. L. No. 103-322, tit. XVII, 108 Stat. 1796, 2038 (1994); Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007, Pub. L. No. 110-189, 122 Stat. 639; Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification Act, Pub. L. No. 110-314, § 104, 122 Stat. 3016, 3028 (2008).

Laudatory (and Cautionary) Gestures

An additional convention for short titles is to honor individuals. Frequently the honorees are advocates associated with the fight for the legislation, such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, named for the plant manager at Goodyear who famously sued the company for sex discrimination in its pay practices.128 Even before the reign of the official short title, some laws had become known by the names of persons other than the sponsors, and not always to honor them.129 Now formal short titles often used these names, though typically in conjunction with a description of the subject matter of the bill. Other laudatory names honor recently deceased members of Congress130 or retiring members who are also the bill’s sponsor.131

128. Pub. L. No. 111-2, 123 Stat. 5. See also Kate Pickert, Lilly Ledbetter, tIme, Jan. 29, 2009, https://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1874954,00.html.

129. E.g., Lindbergh Kidnapping Act, ch. 271, 47 Stat. 326 (1932) (making interstate kidnap- ping a federal crime and named for the kidnapped and murdered son of Charles Lindbergh); Shirley Temple Act, ch. 676, § 13(c), 52 Stat. 1060, 1068 (1938) (exempting child actors from child labor laws and named for the child actress); Hiss Act, ch. 1214, 68 Stat. 1142 (1954) (prohibiting payment of government annuities to employees convicted of crimes and named for the convicted spy Alger Hiss).

130. E.g., the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 89-10, tit. IV, pt. B, 102 Stat. 130, 237 (named for Sen. Javits of New York, who died in 1986); Stephanie Tubbs Jones Organ Transplant Authorization Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-426, 122 Stat. 4835 (named for Rep. Tubbs Jones of Ohio, whose organ donation at her death in August 2008 is credited with spurring an increase in organ donation in her home state of Ohio, see Angela Townsend, Tubbs Jones’ Organ Donation Inspired Many Others; Rise in Numbers Called Testament to Legacy, PlaIn dealer (Cleveland), Apr. 20, 2009, at A1). 131. E.g., Augustus F. Hawkins–Robert T. Stafford Elementary and Secondary School Improvement Amendments of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-297, 102 Stat. 130; Tom Osborne Federal Youth Coordination Act, Pub. L. No. 109-365, tit. VIII, 120 Stat. 2522, 2594 (2006). The most fre- quent occurrence of this practice seems to accompany the annual authorizing legislation for the Department of Defense, which was named for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond in 1999, Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, Pub. L. No. 105-261, 112 Stat. 1920 (1998); for House Armed Services Committee Chairman Floyd Spence in 2001, Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, Pub. L. No. 106- 398, 114 Stat. 1654 (2000); and for House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton in 2011, Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, Pub. L. No. 111-383, 124 Stat. 4137

..

Abbreviations

As they began to have political salience, short titles grew long.(132) People began to refer to these acts not by their lengthening short titles, but by acronyms based on abbreviations that were sometimes rather loosely drawn from those short titles. In effect, they developed short titles for the short titles. In doing so, they were in effect acknowledging that the official short title could no longer serve its original purpose of providing a handy reference to the act in question.

At first, abbreviations had no particular meaning in themselves and were entirely informal. For example, there was the abbreviation of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, whose mostly fortuitous abbrevia- tion created the amusing ISTEA (pronounced “ice tea”). Soon, however, the abbreviations came to be designed to have a relevant meaning, if only an evocative one, relating to the bill. Sometimes the abbreviation was spelled out in the short title itself. We find an early example in the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act of 1989. Consider, too, the Act for Reform In Emerging New Democracies and Support and Help for Improved Partnership with Russia, Ukraine, and Other New Independent States, or the FRIENDSHIP Act. The short title was so long that there had to be another, shorter one, added entirely separately. The longer title was probably constructed with the intent of providing a plausible abbreviation that would lead to the shorter short title, which was likely the one intended for actual use. Unlike ISTEA, the abbreviated title of the FRIENDSHIP Act hinted at its purpose. This also led to the use of short titles that would pack a political punch relating to the purpose of the bill, either by the use of an acronym or directly.

Acronyms

Acronyms of short titles associated positive things with the bill they labeled.136 Some amounted to slogans in favor of their own passage: Support Anti- Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002 (with a similarly editorial acronym, the SAFETY Act).137 So, too, with the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, also short-titled the PROTECT Act,138 and the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.139 ¶42 Eventually this approach would come to encourage long and twisting “short titles” that abbreviated to something politically evocative, such as the USA PATRIOT Act,140 the original “short title” of which is quite a mouthful (consulte más sobre estos temas en la presente plataforma online de ciencias sociales y humanidades). Rumor has it that staff spent a great deal of their time during the rather hurried consideration of the act devising this short title. This trend continues with acts such as the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act, or the SPEECH Act.141 Perhaps the most creative use of an abbreviation in a short title was the 2005 transportation legislation steered by Rep. Don Young. He named the act the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, or SAFETEA-LU, supposedly as a nod to his beloved wife, Lu Young.142 By the 1990s, the triumph of the short title was so complete that many did not realize the official title of the bill was the “long title.”

132. See, e.g., Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental and Native American Public Policy Act of 1992, Pub. L. No. 102-259, 106 Stat. 78.

136. E.g., Legal Immigration Family Equity Act or LIFE Act, Pub. L. No. 106-553, tit. XI, 114 Stat. 2762-51, 2762A-142 (2000). 137. Pub. L. No. 107-296, subtit. G, 116 Stat. 2135, 2238. 138. Pub. L. No. 108-21, 117 Stat. 650. 139. Pub. L. No. 108-187, 117 Stat. 2699. 140. Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 272. The law’s full original short title was the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT Act) Act of 2001.” The short title was amended in the 2005 reauthorization so that the law could be cited as either the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001” or the “USA PATRIOT Act.” USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-177, § 101(b), 120 Stat. 192, 194. 141. Pub. L. No. 111-223, 124 Stat. 2380 (2010).
142. Pub. L. No. 109-59, 119 Stat. 1144 (2005). See also Elizabeth Bluemink, Lu Young, Wife of Rep. Don Young, Dies, adn.Com: anChorage daIly news, Aug. 2, 2009, https://www.adn.com/2009/08/02/885403/lu-young-wife-of-rep-don-young.html.

Resources

Notes

Further Reading

• Daniel Greenberg, Laying Down the Law: A Discussion of the People, Processes, and Problems that Shape Acts of Parliament. London, UK: Sweet & Maxwell (2011).
• Lawrence M. Solan, The Language of Statutes: Laws and Their Interpretation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (2010).
• Ruth Fox & Matt Korris, Making Better Law: Reform of the Legislative Process from Policy to Act. London, UK: The Hansard Society (2010).
• Ian McLeod, Principles of Legislative and Statutory Drafting. Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing (2009).
• Daniel Greenberg, Craies on Legislation (9th Ed.). London, UK: Sweet and Maxwell (2008).
• Francis Bennion, Statutory Interpretation (5th Ed.). London, UK: Butterworths (2008).
• Thomas R. Haggard & George W. Kuney, Legal Drafting in a Nutshell. St. Paul, MN: Thompson/West (2007).
• William N. Eskridge, Philip P. Frickey, & elizabeth Garrett, Legislation and Statutory Interpretation (2nd Ed). New York, NY: Foundation Press (2006).
• William Safire, The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time: Wit and Wisdom from the Popular Language Column in the New York Times Magazine. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster (2004).
• Eric Redman, The Dance of Legislation. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press (2001).
• Murray Edelman, The Politics of Misinformation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (2001).
• G.C. Thornton, Legislative Drafting (4th Ed.). West Sussex, UK: Tottel Publishing (1996).
• Uwe Poerksen, Plastic Words: The Tyranny of a Modular Language. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press (1995).
• David A (consulte más sobre estos temas en la presente plataforma online de ciencias sociales y humanidades). Rochefort & Roger W. Cobb, The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press (1994).
• Edward v. Schneier & Bertram Gross, Congress Today. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan (1993).
• Donald Hirsch, Drafting Federal Law (2nd Ed.). Government Printing Office: Washington D.C (1989).
• Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (2nd Ed.). Champagne, IL: University of Illinois Press (1985).
• R. Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (1990).
• Reed Dickerson, The Interpretation and Application of Statutes. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. (1975).
• Reed Dickerson, The Fundamentals of Legal Drafting. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. (1965).
• David Mellinkoff, The Language of the Law. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co. (1963).

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