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Abstract
The consensus with regard to the 112th Congress is that it was a massive failure: the Congress passed fewer laws than in previous years, and the contemptuous debates over the debt ceiling and the so-called "fiscal cliff" did not win this Congress many supporters. So what redeeming qualities could have been present in such an irredeemable Congress? I believe that there was at least one: a returning focus on descriptive short titles for laws, rather than a perpetuation of the evocative and tendentious short titles that have been commonplace over the past couple of decades. A recent publication of mine explored what I called the "Congressional Short Title (R)Evolution," for over the past few decades, short titles have become more frequently used, longer, and more likely to employ acronyms or personalization; they have also increasingly used evocative words while they have decreasingly used technical, descriptive language. In fact, CQ Weeklyrecently reported on the revolution and highlighted my research, noting that short titles "often oversell what [laws] actually accomplish." Nevertheless, by decreasing the frequency of evocative language and increasing the use of technical- and descriptive-language short titles, members of the "most worthless, incompetent, do-nothing" Congress brought the lawmaking body back to the brink of rationality.
Recommended Citation
Brian C. Jones,
One Redeeming Quality About the 112th Congress: Refocusing on Descriptive Rather than Evocative Short Titles,
112
Mich. L. Rev. First Impressions
1
(2013).
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr_fi/vol112/iss1/3