How Bills Become Laws, Essay Example

Introduction

In order to fully understand how the Constitution and the U.S. legal system works, it is important to find out about the connection between bills and laws. The below essay is looking to reveal the different steps that a bill needs to go through within the legal system in order to become a law.

What are Bills

Bills have no power on the legislation: they are expressions of idea to be discussed by the Congress. While these bills are proposals for creating a new law or modifying an existing one, they have to go through several processes to get approved and pass the Congress. Bills can be proposed on the national level by members of the Senate or the House of Representatives. Bills usually have one main sponsor, who might get the idea from the public or from lobby groups.

The Process

The proposals are next submitted to the Congress through the Clerk of the House. In some cases, when the bill covers one particular legislative area, it is referred to a specific committee. Once the hearing is completed, the committee makes suggestions for changes and modifications before taking it to the Congress. Indeed, once the Committee receives the bill, a sub-committee is assigned to help with the preparation process, public hearing, and review.

The next step in the process is to release a draft bill for review to relevant government agencies. This is also the time when the public can review and comment on the proposal. If the sub-committee approves the modified draft, the whole committee votes for or against the bill. It is important to note that it is the committee’s responsibility at this point to create a detailed report on the bill, its impact and potential benefits/risks and potential modifications before submitting to the House. Once this report is completed, the decision is made whether or not proceed with submitting the bill to the House. The mark-up hearing is a debate designed to evaluate the strong and weak points of the bill before submission.

If the decision is positive, the bill gets marked up and sent for review to the Rules Committee. This is when the time allocated for debate and rules are set for House discussion. The Rules Committee sends the bill to the House of Representatives for discussion. However, the House has the right to accept or reject it. If it is passed by the House of Representatives, it proceeds further in the legislative system to the U.S. Senate. The Senate can allow (pass) the bill or decline it (this is when it dies). Once approved by the Senate, it goes further up to the President who also has the choice to accept (sign) or veto it. If the President vetoes a bill, this can still be overridden by the 2/3 vote of both the committee and the Senate.

In some cases, the bill passes the Senate in a different form, due to multiple significant modifications during the process. In this case, it has to go back to the Conference Committee to create a report on the finalized terms of the bill and conditions. In major legislative issues, when long-lasting debate of the Senate is involved, the Conference Committee needs to be notified and engaged in checking the modified bill.

References

Minnesota Senate. (2010) How a bill becomes law. The lawmaking process. Retrieved from: <http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/publications/billlaw.pdf>

U.S. Senate. (n.d.) Legislative process: how a senate bill becomes a law. Retrieved from: <http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/legprocessflowchart.pdf>