This is a not-yet-fully developed course syllabus.

Issues in American and Commonwealth Legislative Practice & Procedure

Course Aims

This course concerns legislative practice and procedure – how the legislature should identify and organize its members, select its officers and employees, conduct its internal business and affairs, carry out its legislative tasks, seek information, select which instruments to employ to memorialize its measures, and communicate with the outside world, including the other branches of the government. The student should exit the class with a knowledge of how to advise a presiding officer in regard to the conduct of a meeting under a legislative body’s standing orders, and coordinate statutory and constitutional provisions – or, at the very least, knowledge of where to find persuasive law and authority in regard to such questions. The course materials will concern U.S. federal and state legislatures as well as the legislatures of Britain and the Commonwealth. The course will also stress that Commonwealth and American legislative traditions encompass considerable variation in regard to the basic policy choices discussed here.

Comments are welcomed.

[May 4, 2011]