2011 WORKSHOP ON LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING

Overview

This seminar stresses learning by doing. Participants will convert specific legislative proposals into draft legislative language and structure, including the drafting of a bill. Instruction will include the basics in drafting common statutory provisions. The United States legislative process will be introduced as a case study.

 Members of parliaments, executive, and judicial branches; law drafters, lawyers, and other individuals with an interest in effective legislative drafting techniques and methods.

Course Outline

Legislative Drafting Principles and Analysis

• Applying legislative drafting principles and analysis to proposals for new legislation

Elements of Legislative Drafting: Rules and Exercises

• Achieving the intended legal effect
• Drafting clear legislative sentences
• Structuring and organizing bills and other legislation
• Drafting amendments, repeals, and superseding language to existing law

Hands-On Drafting of Legislation

• Drafting a bill from a specific legislative proposal
• Legislative devices to avoid constitutional confrontation with executive authority: exceptions, waivers, and accountability provisions

Drafting Common Legislative Provisions

• Enforcement provisions
• "Power of the purse" funding provisions
• Grant programs
• Governmental commissions

Legislative Process

• Development of legislative policy
• Comparison of U.S. and foreign legislative processes
• Implementation of treaties through domestic legislation
• Role of legislative committees in developing legislation
• Role of professional legislative services and other legislative support services

Course Advisor

Arthur J. Rynearson served as the Deputy Legislative Counsel of the United States Senate from 1999 to 2003. For more than 26 years, he was an attorney-drafter in the Office of the Legislative Counsel, United States Senate, where he drafted thousands of bills, resolutions, and amendments, with a specialization in foreign relations, international, and immigration law. He has 20 years experience teaching legislative drafting and legislation to foreign parliamentarians, attorneys, and law students. He also served as a legislative researcher for the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. He is a graduate of the Cornell University Law School, where he specialized in international legal affairs, and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hamilton College, where he majored in Government.

Sample of Selected Faculty

Frank Burk, Former US Senate Legislative Counsel