Re: [legaldocml] Bills and Acts

[monica.palmirani <monica.palmirani@unibo.it>]

Dear Grant,

I understand your linguistic doubts, and I see your points. Thanks.

However "bill" and "act" are two general terms selected as representative of two concepts.

In the semiotic triangles of Peirce the concept is represented by a sign, a sign is a representative term/picture/etc. (usually it is the best term for represent the concept), an object is the concrete thing in the real world.

So during the last 5 years, when Akoma Ntoso core was founded, we had about 20 seminars around the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, US, etc.) and we have interviewed about 1000 people at the end we decided to use "bill" for representing all the proposed legislation/regulation/order not yet approved by the authority and "act" for any legislative/regulative/government normative document approved by the authority.

Take also in consideration that "bill" is really a general concept and it deosn't represent any legislative procedural step. "bill" is a pre-proposal, it is the document proposed officially to the clerk, it is the document discussed in the assembly, it is the document approved by the Senate but not yet approved by the Chamber, etc. Bill is any draft document of a future "law" in any steps of any legal tradition, in any law-making system.

Similarly "act" includes all the endorsed/approved documents by a empowered authority, including, paradoxically also the autocratic and military regime documents. :-)

They are only and simply abstract terms for representing all the other types of legal document according with each state legal tradition.
It is a synecdoche: we use a part for representing the whole.

I am confident that we can can explain this in the documentation of the D1 that I am now populating for this afternoon.

Cheers,
Monica

Il 07/02/2013 00:20, Grant Vergottini ha scritto:

There are two document types in Akoma Ntoso which appear intended to cover a wide range of documents - Bills and Acts. I'm having a bit of a difficulty accepting how these two general terms would map into local terms - largely because of the overlap.

The basic model is, I believe, proposed vs. enacted law. A proposed law is a bill and an enacted law is an act. But that over simplifies the documents. In my experience:

Proposed legislation:

===============

Measures might be the general term. I'm not sure if the term measure is applied to enacted law. 

 - Bills

 - Resolutions (Resoluitions are sometime proposed law and sometimes formal expressions of the legislature.)

Sometime the term "bill" is used to describe all types of measures, but that is sloppy use of language rather than correct use of language. 

Enacted Law:

==========

Law is maybe the general term. Depending on the jurisdiction, laws are referred to as:

 - Acts

 - Statutes

 - Ordinances

 - Codes

 - "Titles" in the case of the US Code

 - Constitution

These are all things that are enacted. I am not convinced that you can refer to these all as "acts"

-- Grant
____________________________________________________________________
Grant Vergottini
Xcential Group, LLC.
email: grant.vergottini@xcential.com
phone: 858.361.6738

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