(4) reporting to the attorney general at his request on all by-laws and regulations of public bodies submitted to him for his opinion or approval; (5) reporting on any special matter submitted by any minister to the parliamentary draftsman. 7. The duties of parliamentary draftsmen extend, as above mentioned, to measures introduced by nonofficial members of Parliament. Queensland. Drafts of legislative measures are prepared, in the case of Government measures, under the direction of the department concerned, and usually by a member of the bar, under the supervision, if desired, of the Crown law office. Measures introduced by private members are usually prepared under their own direction, aid being given occasionally from the Crown law office. There is no permanent parliamentary draftsman. South Australia.-Drafts of legislative measures are prepared (1) by the attorney general; (2) by some member of the legal profession specially selected for a particular bill; (3) by some competent official, though not a member of the legal profession, who has special knowledge, e. g., the clerk of the parliaments, the principal returning officer of the Province, the military commandant; and bills of supply and appropriation by the clerk of assembly; (4) public bills introduced by private members are drafted by themselves or by whom they appoint. There is no official draftsman. Victoria. Measures for submission to Parliament are prepared by the parliamentary draftsman under the direction of ministers. The parliamentary draftsman is an officer of the public service, appointed by the governor in council, and attached to the department of the attorney general, to whom he is directly responsible. His duties are to prepare all Government bills and draft amendments therein. He also, when desired, drafts bills for private members, and as a general rule of all such bills, by whomsoever drafted, are examined by him, and, when necessary, specially submitted to the attorney general or the premier for his consideration. Western Australia.-By various persons, viz, the attorney general, a minister, or by a private member. There is now an official draftsman, appointed by the governor in council, on the recommendation of the attorney general, to whom he is responsible. He has no staff, and his duties are indeterminate. They do not extend to measures introduced by private members. STATISTICS. Statistics of bills and joint resolutions introduced in Congress. 1 In addition to the above, the simple and concurrent resolutions introduced in the Senate and House Representatives numbered in the Sixtieth Congress 1,117 and in the Sixty-first Congress 1,504. Statistics of legislation, 1906-7 and 1907-8, giving number of laws and resolutions passed. A BILL To establish a department in the Congressional Library for the purpose of gathering and indexing statute-law material and legal material of a comparative nature and to provide for draftsmen for congressional measures and to otherwise assist and aid Members of Congress and public officials. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there is hereby created a separate department of the Congressional Library to be known as the Legislative Division of the Congressional Library. It shall have offices in the Library of Congress. SEC. 2. That the Librarian of the Library of Congress shall appoint a responsible chief of the Legislative Division of the Congressional Library. The chief shall have a thorough training and a practical education in the principles of government and experience in the general field of political science and in the drafting of statute law. He shall have a knowledge of comparative law and governmental institutions and such other experience and training as to fit him thoroughly for the duties of said office. He shall be appointed without reference to party affiliations and shall be exempt from civil-service examination or classification, and shall hold office during good behavior. His salary shall be fixed by the Librarian of Congress, with the advice and consent of the President. SEC. 3. That the chief shall authority to appoint such other secretaries, technical assistants, and investigators and draftsmen as may be necessary. He shall have authority, under the conditions hereinafter specified, to employ special technical assistants outside the classified service from time to time as emergency arises. He shall gather technical material bearing upon legislation in such a manner that the President and the different departments of the Government and Congress will have ready and available such material, and to this end he is authorized to translate, gather, and index foreign data and matter relating to legislation. Other departments of the Government at Washington and elsewhere shall render all reasonable assistance to the Legislative Division of the Congressional Library in any matters of research connected with duties of said department, and public records shall be open at all times to said department. SEC. 4. That no bill shall be drafted for Members of either House by said department save only through written instructions accompanied by a rough draft or rough notes of the provisions desired in such bill, signed by fifteen Members of the House of Representatives or by five Members of the Senate. All such rough drafts and instructions shall be kept in the permanent file of the department for future reference. No rough draft shall be made public save upon direction from the Members requesting said drafts until the bill shall have been printed by Congress, but until that time all such data shall be considered confidential. The department shall not draft private, local, or special bills, or bills for private persons. Bills for public officials shall be drafted only on written directions from the President. SEC. 5. That special research may be made on direction of the President or on the direction of either House of Congress. Such special research may be made through the regular office force or by special technical workers employed from time to time in such manner as may be deemed necessary and as emergency arises. SEC. 6. That the Legislative Division of the Congressional Library, in the research carried on and in furnishing assistance in the formulation of bills, shall not furnish arguments for or against any line of policy or bill or resolution, but shall confine itself to furnishing technical, documentary, or bibliographic material or information, and to drafting bills according to the directions submitted. SEC. 7. That said department is authorized, in addition to the powers now conferred upon the Congressional Library, to make indexes and summaries of laws, cases, and legislative matter of this country and of the States thereof and of foreign countries and to publish the same. SEC. 8. That there is hereby appropriated to the Library of Congress for the establishment and maintenance of the Legislative Division of the Congressional Library the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually: Provided, That in case of emergency or in case of research into matters of legislation or administration undertaken upon the order of the President or of Congress an additional sum sufficient to carry out the purposes of this act is hereby appropriated. A BILL To create a United States Legislative Reference Bureau, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That a bureau is hereby created, to be known as the United States Legislative Reference Bureau, to be administered by a chief appointed by the President of the United States. SEC. 2. That it shall be the business of this bureau to locate, catalogue, and index all material in various Government departments in the shape of bills, laws, debates, departmental research, findings of commissions, consular reports, treatises in legal brief and scholarly periodical, and so forth, touching upon problems of current legislation; to gather, catalogue, and index such further material pertaining to legislative experience at home and abroad as shall seem expedient; to present to Congress at its direction a statement of the material in hand on the subject designated and a compilation of the legislative and administrative experience in such case; to provide Members of Congress, at their request, with such information as the bureau possesses and a bibliography of material on any subject desired; to aid in every possible way by the collection of information and the service of expert advice in making exact more careful legislation. [Extract from the Daily Congressional Record, Mar. 3, 1911, p. 4284.] Mr. OWEN. I offer the amendment which I send to the desk. The VICE PRESIDENT. The amendment proposed by the Senator from Oklahoma will be stated. The SECRETARY. On page 225, after line 2, it is proposed to insert: "To provide a legislative reference bureau as a part of the Congressional Library, under the direction of the Librarian of Congress, $10,000." The amendment was agreed to. APPENDIX B. CONGRESSIONAL REFERENCE BUREAU. COMMITTEE ON THE LIBRARY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C., Monday, February 26, 1912. The committee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m. Present: Representative Slayden (chairman), Townsend, Evans, Gardner, and Pickett. The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, the committee has met this morning to have what we call here in Congress a hearing on certain bills that have been submitted for the purpose of establishing a Congressional Reference Bureau. I am informed that a somewhat similar institution works in connection with the House of Commons in Great Britain, and for some years there has been in connection with the State legislature of the State of Wisconsin a similar institution, and all reports from that State, with which we are much more familiar than we are, of course, with those of Great Britain, indicate that it is an institution of extreme usefulness. The committee has felt that it is a matter of great importance, and feels gratified that the distinguished gentlemen have come here from a distance, and is particularly gratified to have here His Excellency the Right Hon. James Bryce, ambassador from Great Britain, who has consented to take some of his valuable time to tell this committee, out of his abundant store of experience and wisdom, how these projects work in his own country. Mr. Nelson, who is the author of this bill, will speak for a few minutes to the committee in a preliminary, explanatory way. STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN M. NELSON, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM WISCONSIN. Mr. NELSON. Mr. Chairman, there is pending before the Library Committee a bill (H. R. 18720) to establish a Congressional Reference Bureau in the Library of Congress, to which I wish to direct the committee's attention. I do not desire to speak at length upon this bill at the present time, because I wish to give way to these gentlemen who have come from afar, hundreds of miles, and some of them as far as a thousand miles, to give the committee the benefit of their study and experience along this line. I will just briefly give an account of the origin and preparation of this bill. For 10 years or more it has been my good fortune to observe its practical operation in my own State. I live in the capital city of Wisconsin, and I had frequent opportunity to see how this legislative reference bureau supplements the work of the legislator and how it gives him exact knowledge of conditions, relations, and circumstances in any given field of activity with which he has to deal; how it enables him to apply to those conditions exact economic, sociological, and political principles; how it enables him to perfect the form of legislation to fit the law into existing laws, to utilize the success and failure of other States and countries, gives him information as to the constitutionality, State and National, of the proposed law, and when I saw this operating in Wisconsin and realized how useful, how necessary, how exceedingly helpful an agency it is, and then, after six years' experience in Congress with our lack of these facilities, although we have the Library of Congress, with its millions of books, periodicals, and magazines, that might be made to focus upon the great questions before us, and realizing the wealth of information in the departments and bureaus of Government, and that might be made more available for our needs, I determined to do all that in my power lies to see to it that a legislative reference bureau be established as an agency of helpfulness for Congress, to enlarge our individual and collective capacity for legislative service, to attain a maximum of legislative efficiency. 71 I then went to the chief of our reference bureau of Wisconsin and asked him if he would assist in the preparation of a bill which would give us the benefit of this helpful agency. In consultation with Dr. McCarthy and the secretary of the commission, Mr. Dudgeon, who is nominally, at least, the chief of that bureau, we prepared a measure, which I introduced, and it is H. R. 4703. Senator Owen introduced an amendment to the Senate along the same line, and it was then our efficient Librarian of Congress, seeing that Congress was interested in this matter, prepared a very good report, which gave a survey of the field, to which the librarian will call attention. Then I took this bill and sent it to all the experts, the legislative librarians in the country, to university men who had given this legislative agency scientific study, and to men who are familiar wtih the needs of improvement of substance and form in legislation, and I have here letters from them, from which I shall briefly read extracts, so that you can get an idea of how this strikes the popular mind. The CHAIRMAN. You want those to go into the record? Mr. NELSON. I want them in the record. Should I read them now? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. NELSON. I will just read one from especially noted men. Mr. PICKETT. A good many are waiting to be heard. Mr. NELSON. I got this from Gov. Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey. [Reading:] "Gov. Woodrow Wilson (of New Jersey): I was very glad to hear from you, and I want to assure you that I entirely approve of such legislation as is proposed by bill H. R. 31356. * * * I can only say that it seems to me highly important that a legislative reference department should be established in the Congressional Library. The experience of several of our States in this matter is conclusive as to the great usefulness of such a department. Indeed, I think if once established everyone who had any knowledge of it would deem it indispensable.' I have letters from the president of Harvard University, from the president of the University of Wisconsin, from former President Roosevelt, and others along that line. The excerpts from letters submitted by Mr. Nelson are as follows: 66 EXTRACTS FI OM LETTERS FROM RECOGNIZED EXPERTS. "President A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard University: * * The plan of your bill for a legislative division in the Congressional Library seems to me an excellent one, for a great many mistakes may be saved and many useful hints obtained by knowing what has been done under similar conditions elsewhere, and at present there is a vast deal of such information of which we are really wholly ignorant. It is not enough to collect it, it must be put in such form that one can use it without enormous labor. The legislative bureau in Wisconsin seems to me to have done excellent work in this direction. * * * "President Charles R. Van Hise, University of Wisconsin: I am very glad, however, to give my unqualified indorsement to the plan. All who know the situation in Wisconsin before we had a legislative reference library and since that time appreciate the superiority of the present condition. While the ideas of the members are strictly carried out, the bills are framed in such form that they are not likely to be overturned by the courts because of lack of consideration of other laws and of decisions. * * * "I have no doubt that once Congress establishes the bureau proposed the Members will find it of immeasurable assistance to them in getting their bills into satisfactory form. "Prof. John H. Wigmore, Northwestern University Law School: Relpying to your letter of December 8, as to the bill (H. R. 4703) for Legislative Reference Bureau, I heartily favor the general principle. I also favor this particular bill. * "Prof. A. N. Holcombe, Harvard University: * * I consider the object of your bill an excellent one, and the bill itself well calculated to give effect to your purpose. I doubt if I shall be able to appear at the time of the hearings before the Library Committee, and hence am glad to put in writing my opinion upon the matter, to be used by you at your discretion. I cordially indorse both the object of this proposed legislation and the particular bill you have prepared. * "Dean Andrew A. Bruce, College of Law, University of North Dakota: The bill as drafted appears to me a most excellent one, and I can offer no suggestions in the line of its improvement as a bill. * I sincerely hope that the measure * * will pass. It is scientific, practical, up to date, and democratic. A Congressman should be able to call to his aid all the skilled advice and technical, legal, historical, and sociological knowledge that is possible. The problems of to-day are too serious and important for guesswork legislation. A Congressman has hardly the time or physical strength to even read the bills that are introduced in Congress, much less to thoroughly study |