Writing
Guides and analysis.
Practitioner's guides for drafters, and analysis of the decisions that show what happens to language after enactment.
Canons of Construction in Massachusetts
The canons an SJC or Appeals Court panel actually reaches for, in the order they are reached for: what triggers each one, what defeats it, which ones the General Court has codified in G.L. c. 4, and where the pairs that point in opposite directions get resolved. With the drafting corollary for each — the language that invites the canon in the first place.
ReadDrafting Effective Dates in Massachusetts
When a bill or a section takes effect, and who decides when the drafter does not. The three default rules, the five referendum-exempt categories, what an emergency preamble costs and what it does not do, the Sutton rule for outside sections, retroactivity after Landgraf, and how Massachusetts counts days.
ReadLegislative Research and Drafting Manual, Fifth Edition
The General Court's own manual, published jointly by Counsel to the Senate and Counsel to the House of Representatives: bill structure, formatting requirements, statutory references, and the conventions the General Court expects. The text behind the Ask the Drafting Manual tool.
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