Legislation

This is the website for my Legislation course, to be offered for the first time this Summer. The course is offered for 2 credits, and will meet on Thursdays from 5:30 - 9:00. There will be no class on June 25 (I'll be at the CALI conference), and so we'll have a makeup class on July 9 (which is, conveniently, set aside for makeup classes).

The text for the course is Eskridge and Frickey, Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy (2d ed., West, 1995). Check the Syllabus and Course Description for details of the course.

You may find the MetaIndex for US Legal Research a useful place to start doing legislative research. There are links from there to searchable sources of both legislative and judicial information.

Other resources:

THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet -- use this site to find pending federal legislation of interest

Among the interesting information available at this site is How Our Laws Are Made

C-SPAN Online -- consult this site for information about Congressional hearings and other political matters
CapWeb -- The Internet Guide to the U.S. Congress, maintained by current and former Capitol Hill staffers, has a wealth of information.
You'll probably find something of interest at the Congressional Quarterly.
Georgia General Assembly -- use this site to find pending Georgia legislation of interest (there will, of course, be no action on this over the Summer)
House of Commons (UK) -- here you'll find a link to Hansard, the record of Parliamentary debate discussed in Pepper v. Hart (at page 758 of the casebook).

The opinion of the US Supreme Court in Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v. Yeskey, per Justice Scalia, is interesting reading.

This case with no name, involving interpretation of a sentencing statute, is also interesting, primarily for the line-up of Justices -- Breyer, O'Connor, Kennedy, Stevens, and Thomas in the majority, Ginsburg, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Souter in dissent.

The US Supreme Court has invalidated the line-item veto, in Clinton v. City of New York.

The class has an email discussion list (law7375pw@gsulaw.gsu.edu). Subscription instructions are on the Syllabus.

Assign yourself a password for access to the discussion list archive and other password-protected class materials.