Keep an Eye on Proposed Legislation

The monitoring of proposed legislation is an important facet of legislative law, as the writing of new laws can continuously undermine and override the existence of standing statutes or regulations, and therefore can have Some pieces of proposed legislation, especially those that can be seen as enacting a controversial measure, will often have legal forces marshalling against it before it is even signed into law, and therefore many may keep tabs on proposed legislation in the interests of eventually contesting the nascent law in court through stare decisis.

Many of the laws passed today, no matter the jurisdiction, are also very complex and complicated, usually as a means for being able to endure legal action (”covering all the bases,” proverbially speaking), and due simply to the give and take nature of political legislation, so keeping track of ongoing changes to these laws can be very important to an individual looking to eventually contest those laws.

Often knowing the nature of pending legislation has an important effect on standing litigation. If the law is passed, even in another jurisdiction, its relevance under the oversight of a larger government (in the form of a constitution) can make it relevant by similarity to a similar action in another jurisdiction. Therefore, the potential law, whose passage can generally be determined by monitoring its legislative process, especially if cited as corroborating primary sources to that higher legal authority, which in the case of the overall federal authority would be either a federal court or the Supreme Court.

There are many means of monitoring proposed legislation available to a research paralegal. Minutes to a legislative session also become a matter of public record, and can be accessed from the office of the clerk of that legislative body, usually in person. Many political news sources will at least have some coverage of legislative news, commonly online these days, and they can be a prime source of up-to-date information. All of these are valuable sources for a paralegal who needs to stay up to the moment on proposed legislation.

In some ways monitoring proposed legislation can become involved in the ongoing debate about the role of legislative history should play in judicial review.

NEXT: Know the Categories of Legal Research