Miscellaneous

Bill Tracks Bills

By Anne Skove, Esq.

We fondly recall Januaries of years past when befuddled legislative aides would call NCSC's Knowledge and Information Service to learn about a major issue in 60 seconds or less. Apparently, having an issue be part of your platform during the election does not necessarily translate into action once the real work starts.

Likewise, court staff are often befuddled by legislative sausage-making. Which bills will affect courts? How? What is the life cycle of the sausage?

There's a new service from Gavel to Gavel (i.e., Bill) that will do everybody a world of good -- a searchable database of court-related legislation!

Forget the expensive, confusing, and vague legislative tracking from big-name legal research. Gavel to Gavel allows users to search by state, bill type, and year. (Yes, big-name legal research is used to populate it, but Bill does the work so you don't have to! Everybody needs a Bill to track their bills.)

Gavel to Gavel has traditionally tracked legislation relating to judicial selection, judicial qualifications, judicial rule-making authority, court administrative structure, jurisdiction, salary/budget, and a catch-all "other" category. The bill types in the database reflect these categories.

Don't worry, Gavel fans -- the database will *not* replace the weekly updates distributed during the legislative session (December - June).

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).