Overview

This seminar focuses on skills necessary to sustain a modern legislature. Elected officials and legislative staff at the National, State, and International level are ideal candidates for this seminar. Legislatures work under constant pressure to enact laws and review national policies efficiently and effectively in an ever-changing and complex environment. Working in this environment requires close attention to how the process is managed and how the institutions function. The focus of this seminar will be organizational structure and practical techniques for managing legislative institutions.

Format

The seminar will be delivered through 5 live on-Line sessions via Zoom videoconferencing platform. Each session will last approximately 3.5 hours. We expect the class to be highly interactive and will include presentations, case studies and exercises.

Course Outline

Role of Legislative Staff

• The relationship between career and political staff appointments
• Effective allocation of staff to support member offices, committees, leadership and administrative services

Legislative Organization

• Comparative analysis of legislative and parliamentary models
• Review of unicameral and bicameral structures
• How to work with leadership offices and through committees
• How can the legislative branch have a more productive relationship with the executive branch?

Legislative Support Offices

• Budgeting, staffing and training
• Determining what legislative support offices are appropriate for a specific country or state; e.g. research, legislative drafting, committees, administration and members' offices

Course Advisor

H. Stephen Halloway is the Director of ILI's Center for Comparative Legislative Management. He has over 35 years of experience in senior legal and policy positions in the U.S. Government, the U.S. Senate, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank. He was Chief Regulatory Officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce and a civil rights attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is co-founder of the Multilateral Procurement Group, an informal steering committee of multinational companies and consultants regularly doing business with the MDBs and UN.

Kim Phan is the Executive Director of the International Law Institute, where she oversees all of ILI’s practice areas. Ms. Phan also serves as the Project Director of all ILI projects with various donors and has worked on projects in over 30 countries. Prior to joining ILI, she worked at the U.S. Embassy in Manila/Office of the U.S. Commercial Liaison to the Asian Development Bank where she served as the United States – Asia Environmental Partnership Liaison to the Asian Development Bank. She has a Masters in the Study of Law from Northwestern University Law School and a B.A. from Allegheny College with a focus in Nuclear Warfare Strategy. She teaches a course at the University of California at Irvine Law School. Ms. Phan is the immediate past President of the Board of the Friends of the Law Library of Congress.