For now, one legislative process point about VRA renewal that will of interest to academics and lawyers focused on the role of legislative history in statutory interpretation: As I understand it, although the Senate has now passed the VRA, the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet written or filed the Committee Report on the legislation. That is, the Senate approved the bill without any Commitee Report to purport, even, to consider. The Report will be written and filed sometime later. Personally, I had not been aware that there was even a practice of filing Committee Reports after a bill had already been approved. I assume the Senate Rules must permit this. I also would be curious how often this practice occurs. I also wonder how often lawyers or judges are aware that a Report has been filed after a chamber has voted (if the House permits a similar practice). If one were aware of the possibility of this practice, you might check dates on the Reports a
nd the approved bill, assuming the Senate does not also backdate its Reports. But I follow these issues relatively closely and I was not aware until recently that this was even a possibility.
Of most significance, the existence of this practice surely has relevance to the heated debates over the role of legislative history, particularly Committee Reports, in judicial decisions interpreting statutes. Should courts ignore Committee Reports filed after a chamber has already voted on a bill? Does that mean Committee Reports should be given weight for some statutes and not others? More broadly, if Congress itself -- or, in this case, the Senate at least -- treats its own Committee Reports as irrelevant to actual legislating, should the courts invoke that as a reason not to give these Reports the weight they have traditionally been given in interpretation? I had thought courts were right to consider these Reports, albeit cautiously, but this example has to give anyone pause about the specific and the general questions raised by this recent example. I should note that my understanding that the Committee Report would be filed after the vote is based on my knowledge
as of yesterday; it is possible, perhaps, that the Committee Report was actually filed today before the vote, but that seems unlikely.
Best,
Rick
Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
Co-Director, NYU Center on Law and Security
NYU School of Law
phone: 212 998-6377
fax: 212 995-3662