DRAFTING FEDERAL LAW Second Edition by Donald Hirsch Currently a lecturer and private consultant on legislative drafting, the Drafting Federal Law is a self-teaching manual of modern federal drafting Printed for the Use of the Office of the Legislative Counsel Grad Oct 28, 1991 FOREWORD The best and possibly only way to learn to draft a federal legislative bill is by trying to draft one. Most professional drafters wrote their first bills during an apprenticeship in which they learned largely by trial and error. But apprenticeships are time-consuming and labor intensive. I therefore tried, in 1979, to develop a drafting seminar that would simulate such an apprenticeship for a small group, no more than a dozen, but would concentrate the experience into about 30 or 40 hours of classroom instruction, spread over 8 to 10 weeks. At the time, I directed the legislative drafting staff of the Department of Health and Human Services. My first students were necessarily drawn from my younger colleagues: attorneys working in other fields within the department who nevertheless wanted to learn to draft. This book grew out of that seminar. From the beginning, David Meade, now the Legislative Counsel of the House of Representatives, Lawrence Filson, recently retired as the Deputy Legislative Counsel, and (through David) Ward Hussey, then Legislative Counsel, strongly encouraged me to complete it. To be urged on by the nation's three preeminent federal drafters was both intimidating and inspiring. In 1980 the Department of Health and Human Services, HEW's successor, published the book under the title Drafting Federal Law. The purpose of the book was, and continues to be, three-fold: to serve as a selfhelp manual to train drafters; to develop their capacity to analyze bills for technical sufficiency; and to strengthen their understanding of the links between legislative ideas and legislative language. The original printing of the book has long since been exhausted, in tribute, perhaps, to its having been made available to the public at no charge. I am therefore especially grateful to OLC for giving me the opportunity to publish a second edition. This has enabled me to add an article on drafting appropriations riders, and to expand the discussion of style and usage, as well as to supplement other articles and add new exercises. The materials have been updated to conform to OLC's Style Manual: Drafting Suggestions for the Trained Drafter, published by OLC on February 28, 1989. Also, a new edition gave me the chance to reorganize the book's presentation. The original text concentrated on the preparation of a free-standing bill, and then moved on to describe amendatory technique. Having now taught legislative drafting to government and private audiences for 10 years, I have become convinced that it makes more pedagogic sense to start with the amendatory bill, before taking on the additional complexities of the free-standing bill. Most drafters begin by drafting amendments; and the drafting of amendments will remain throughout their careers a principal concern. Although this change of focus caused me to rewrite virtually all of the exercises of the first edition, I have preserved and, I hope, improved the original text. Donald Hirsch §2.2.1. An amendatory section should entirely accomplish a single policy objective §2.2.2. An amendment should not anticipate a future amendment §2.2.3. An amendment should assume the enactment of prior amendments §2.4. The sequence, within a section of an amendatory bill, of amendments to an act §2.5. Amendment by restatement versus amendment by striking and inserting |