Act (Public Administration)

Legislation (a bill or joint resolution) that has passed both chambers of Congress (in the case of the federal government) or a state legislature and has been signed into law by the president or the state governor or has passed over his or her veto, thus becoming law.

A bill is the principal mechanism employed by lawmakers for introducing their proposals (e.g., enacting or repealing laws) in the appropriate chamber of the legislature. Bills introduced in the U.S. Senate, for example, are designated S. 1, S. 2, and so on depending on the order in which they are introduced. They address matters of either general interest (“public bills”) or narrow interest (“private bills”), such as immigration cases and individual claims against the federal or state government. Once passed, public bills become public laws (i.e., they have general applicability nationwide), and private bills become private laws, which have restricted applicability to the individual(s) involved.

A law is a rule of conduct established and enforced by the authority, legislation, or custom of a given community, state, or nation, including federal or state constitutions or statutes, judicial decision, common law, rule of court, executive order, or rule or order of an agency. Consequently, not all laws are the products of [Page 6]legislation. For example, the Supreme Court decision Perry v. Sindermann concerned the failure of a Texas state community college to reemploy a professor who had criticized the college administration. Although the school employees' manual stated that the school did not grant tenure, the reality was that all teachers were routinely reemployed except the one who criticized the school, exercising his First Amendment freedom of speech right.

The term act may also be applied technically to a bill that one house has passed but that has not yet become a law. Subsequently, when both houses of Congress pass an act and it becomes a law, it is assembled with other laws (chronologically) in a bound volume titled Statutes at Large for the federal government or Session Laws in the case of, for example, the state of Illinois. For more information, see Illinois General Assembly (n.d.), Perry v. Sindermann (1972), U.S. House of Representatives (2003), and U.S. Senate (n.d.).