Re: Law reforms

On 15 Jul 2008, , jayaraj <mpjraj@gmail.com> wrote:

> May I know the mode and procedure for law reforms
> in United States?  Is there the methode of appointing
> law commissions to study existing laws and recommend 
> reforms? That is the methode adopted in India.

This necessarily is an "executive summary" since the exact "Who?"s and
"How?"s can vary considerably.

As is partly so in India, the U.S. has a federal system of government
-- a system of, 
     on the one hand, legislative (the U.S. congress, consisting of
the "House of Representatives" and the "Senate") and also
administrative law-making (various congressionally authorized
agencies) re. matters of law relegated to the "federal" government on
a country-wide basis  and 
     on the other hand, fifty separate states, each with its own
legislative and administrative law-making bodies, which more or less
parallel on a state level what pertains to the federal government on a
federal level, and, in turn, consitutent governmental units of states
(i.e., counties, or the like, and municipal governments, most with
their own legislative and administrative law making bodies and
procedures).

In theory, and in rare instances in fact, any individual (and also
most businesses or representatives of businesses or other
organizations) may propose the enactment of a law or, if the person or
organization has "standing" to do so, may propose an administrative
rule to an administrative agency with rule making authority, whether
on the state or federal or local level.

Sometimes, a (state or federally or locally) mandated governmentally
appointed "commission" or like body, or in some instances, some
self-appointed such, proposes new laws or the repeal or modication of
existing laws and, sometimes (but increasingly in recent years,
perhaps not very often), the targeted legislative body acts on the
comission's recommendation.  

(In the period from around 1900 through perhaps the 1940s, various
governmentally appointed "commissions" or the like, both on a federal
and also state to state level, were sometimes quite influential in
obtaining the passage of This or That law.)

More commonly/increasingly in recent years, however,(although some
version of this has occurred thoughout the country's history),
professional "lobbyists" -- paid representatives of This or That
organization or "interest group" -- try to persuade members of
congress at the federal level or state analog governmental bodies to
enact laws and, very frequently, the lobbists actually draft the
legislative (or, as the case may be, administrative) provision for
which they are lobbying (s/k/a,  the law they are uying" directly or
at least in effect)

In 2000, there were upwards of fifteen thousand "registered" (i.e.,
acknowledged) lobbyists in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.,
alone, and, according to the Washington Post (the U.S. capital's still
leading newspaper), in the succeeding seven or so years that number as
more than doubled (to presently more than thirty-four thousand
[sic!]).  Many of the leading/larger such firms consist of former
members of congress, former congressional staff employees, and former
high-level employees of the agencies on whose behalf they now lobby;
and many state and, increasingly, also local local governments are the
target of many professional lobbyists too.