Legislation dispatch

[Canlonia]

I'm looking to maybe write some legislation dispatches for my nation(s), but I'm not particularly great at it. Does anyone have like a template or some help with this?

[Cayucas]

I'm going to assume you're planning to write out stuff like Bills. The sorta thing that first comes to mind when I think "Legislation Dispatch."

The specifics regarding section titles, precise format, order, and fluff bits will vary a lot depending on the formalities of your country or the drafting party. There are some consistent bits that are worth thinking about, though. I'm basing the structure below on a mish-mash between US, UK, and New Zealand formatting. I'll quickly draft up a bit of mock legislation to use as an example. For reference, Cayucas operates a unicameral parliamentary system with a President as head of state.

The
2021 Pepsi is Not Okay Act
To be administered by the Ministry of Business or as the Ministry delegates

An Act of Parliament: 2021 #0001
Date of signature: January 15th, 2021
Commencement: As defined

Preamble
The Parliament of Cayucas:

1. Recognizing the rampant criticism citizens have voiced concerning asking for a Coca-Cola beverage only to be provided a Pepsi beverage,
2. Acknowledging Parliament's responsibility to act upon the requests of the People,
3. Understanding that the warranted action to resolve the People's request would be most fully fulfilled by an Act of Parliament,

Hereby enacts as follows:

---

1. Title
   This Act may be cited as the 2021 Pepsi is Not Okay Act.
   
   
2. Commencement
   This Act comes into force the day after the date on which it receives the Presidential signature.
   
   
3. Purpose
   The purpose of this Act is to require all eateries earning a gross income over $1,000 which offer soft drinks to their customers to provide Coca-Cola beverages to their customers.
   
   
4. Interpretation
   In this Act, unless context requires another meaning:
   
   1. Coca-Cola products are beverage products which are formulated by and sourced from The Coca-Cola Company as incorporated in the United States of America.
   2. Eateries are businesses, or services within a business such as food courts and galleys, whose business model revolves around serving food or drink to the customer.
   3. Menus are the foods or drinks eateries serve their customer.
   4. Derivative foods are foods which incorporate Coca-Cola products or products of a similar nature.
5. The service of Coca-Cola products
   
   1. Eateries are required to incorporate Coca-Cola products into their menus.
   2. Upon the request of the customer, eateries are required to service Coca-Cola products to their customer.
   3. Upon the customer specifying that derivative foods are made exclusively with a Coca-Cola product, eateries are required to use Coca-Cola products in place of ingredients that would normally use another product of a similar nature.
6. Inspection and Penalty
   The Inspection and Penalties induced by this Act are to be decided by Ministry regulation delivered from the Ministry of Business in applying the Act.
   
   
7. Review of this Act
   
   1. The Ministry of Business must review this Act and potential judicial ruling after the first anniversary of its commencement to:
      
      1. Determine if the interests of the People regarding their beverage choices are being met by this Act and other relevant enactments or regulation, and
      2. If the interests are not considered to be sufficiently met, to consider amendment.

---

Schedule 1: Coca-Cola products of interest
The Act is concerned with the sufficient propagation of (at minimum) the following Coca-Cola products within eateries:

1. Coca-Cola
2. Diet Coke
3. Coca-Cola Zero
4. Sprite

So, to break down what you may commonly see, very roughly in order as seen in the above mock Act:

• Header: An area of quick reference for the Act. Typically includes information like the (Short) Title, an absolute reference ID of some sort, and where in the legislative it came from. A long title or purpose may also sometimes go here. In some formats you'd also put here the dates when the Act became a law in effect and the date when it's contents actually begin to apply, whereas in other formats these might exclusively go in the Legislative History. I personally elect to put the administrating executive body up here. If you get around to making your country's or legislative's Coat of Arms or Seal or whatnot, this is also a good place to show it off.
  
  
• Titles and Purposes: Acts at minimum have a Short Title that people may reference the Act as. Then, depending on your local practices, you may have either a Purpose or Long Title. Both practically serve the same purpose: to broadly outline what the Act does.
  
  
• (Optional) Preamble: Preambles are occasionally seen in Acts. They don't have the same legal weight as the rest of the Act, but they can help give an Act context in its history and general intention. They're useful for monumental Acts and are more useful in countries which operate a Common Law system, where the precedents judges establish have distinct weight to them. When precedent holds such a weight, it's a good idea to clearly communicate the Spirit of the Law.
  
  
• Definitions or Interpretations: It's useful to define the important stuff as thoroughly as possible, and chances are you'd want to define more rather than less. Your idea of something might be surprisingly different from someone else's, especially when it comes to the law.
  
  
• The Law Bits: This is what people typically think about when they think about the law. To offer a non-exhaustive list of things to consider: what are the offences, and what are their penalties? Who's primarily responsible for enforcing and administering the law, or for further refining how it's applied with regulation? Who's effected? Is the Executive obligated to do something? Does the Act need to be revisted for a review at some point? Some systems require the legislative to lay this out more explicitly, others may let it be more delegated to the executive departments or even at the judiciary's discretion.
  
  
• Schedules: These seem to be more prevalent in Commonwealth derived systems and typically appear toward the bottom. They function similarly to an appendix: supplementary information that further spells out the Act's intention and terms.
  
  
• Legislative History: Where in the legislative has this Act been? It may be useful to give a timeline charting dates which are important in your country's legislative, like the Act's introduction or when it's signed into law.

Here are a few Acts IRL I used as reference for formatting:

• New Zealand, Haka Ka Mate Attribution Act: IMO the most approachable of formats I've seen. At 11 pages too, it's a relatively concise piece. I used New Zealand's formatting the most.
  
  
• New Zealand, Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust Act 2015: This one is more verbose in comparison. It shows a Preamble in action and separates its sections into various parts.
  
  
• UK, Modern Slavery Act 2015: Definitely the most verbose of the examples I consulted, but I found it helpful to leaf through to see differences in formatting. The UK employs a Misc. and General section towards the bottom of its Acts, which outlines stuff like Interpretations, the regulatory body, and where the law may apply. Both the UK and US employ long titles in the place of a purpose.
  
  
• US, Bureau of Reclamation Transparency Act: Unlike the previous countries, the US doesn't use Schedules in Acts. I'm assuming the auxiliary information that'd typically go in a Schedule is delegated to the executive to iron out. The presence of a Findings section is an interesting inclusion that strikes me as something similar to a Preamble in function.

The biggest piece of advice I could give its that it's unnecessary to reinvent the wheel. Look for existing legislation that's easy to understand in format and content, then borrow from that. A lot of countries put their legislation up online in digital archives. If you want to add a personal flair to it, do it incrementally. It's much easier to do that sorta thing one bit at a time rather than all at once.

[Free Las Pinas]

You can use this if you want to: https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1490864. Alternatively, I could change the font, remove the box, etc.

snip

Great work on this post!! I’ll definitely be referring to this when I get to continue work on my factbooks. I linked it in the dispatch above, but I could take it down if you’d like me to.

[Great Nortend]

I will also note that “preambles” are often known as “recitals” which traditionally are introduced with “whereas”. For example:

An Act for further promoting the Revision of the Statute Law by repealing Enactments which have ceased to be in force or have become unnecessary. [20th June 1892.]

WHEREAS it is expedient that certain enactments which may be regarded as spent, or have ceased to be in force otherwise than by express specific repeal by Parliament, or have, by lapse of time or otherwise, become unnecessary, should be expressly and specifically repealed:

Be it therefore enacted by the Queen”s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Preambles in other forms of documents such as contracts and proclamations also often use “whereas”, although they would use something like “Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God ...” or “This Agreement ... witnesseth whereas the parties ...”

[Canlonia]

Thanks for the help. I decided to start out with something simple with a bill raising my nation's income tax to the stats number and to introduce a sales tax. Hopefully one day, I'll reach the level where the legislation is 1000 pages long and utterly incomprehensible, haha.

[Cayucas]

Thanks for the help. I decided to start out with something simple with a bill raising my nation's income tax to the stats number and to introduce a sales tax. Hopefully one day, I'll reach the level where the legislation is 1000 pages long and utterly incomprehensible, haha.

Pleasure's ours, glad to hear we helped! I took a brief look through the legislation entries you posted. Your legislation is nicely formatted both in style and in structure. I'm sure a proper lawyer could be able to point out how to refine the specifics and cover edge cases, but if you ask me, that's really starting to exceed sensible expectations. In regard to simply looking like a proper bill, these meet the mark nicely and do the job right. Great work!

You're right to start off small and work your way up. There's a lot of stuff that can be covered by the accumulation of smaller Acts, like the ones you posted. A lot of work can be done one bill at a time, maybe a dozen pages at most. Of course you see the behemoths out there too, such as the cited Modern Slavery Act, but such verbose bills are typically reserved for monumental aspects of law: significant Acts only really reach their size because of amendments, Acts that touch on many aspects of life, and Appropriations bills that outline government spending are examples of cases when the verbose occurs. If you want to talk about verbose bills but don't feel like actually writing them, you could likely get away with writing an encyclopedia style summary of the act instead. That way you could still say it theoretically exists without bending over backwards to actually write it all out.

Happy legislating!

Great work on this post!! I’ll definitely be referring to this when I get to continue work on my factbooks. I linked it in the dispatch above, but I could take it down if you’d like me to.

Thank you! No need to take it down, I'm okay with it there.