A Member Of Congress Chooses To Vote For Or Against A Law Due To A Number Of Rea

Below is a free term papers summary of the paper "A Member Of Congress Chooses To Vote For Or Against A Law Due To A Number Of Rea." If you sign up, you can be reading the rest of this term papers in under two minutes. Registered users should login to view this term paper.

Term Paper Title	A Member Of Congress Chooses To Vote For Or Against A Law Due To A Number Of Rea
# of Words	2887
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	11.55

     A member of congress chooses to vote for or against a law due to a number of reasons.  With an issue that is very controversial and publicized a member of congress has to be careful of who he alienates.  This will ultimately affect his or her reelection chances.  The member of congress also has to be concerned with what he believes is the right decision to make.  The passage of the Church Arson Act of 1996 seemed to be a publicized decision, but seemed to have little controversy.  A legislative history of the passage of the bill will be given with analysis made at each step of the process.
In 1996, when the bill was considered the number of churches destroyed by fire had risen dramatically.  In 1995 there were only 6 reported churches burned by arson but already in 1996 there were 26.   Because of this enormous increase the publicity was immense.  Both the House and the Senate were working on bills that would address this issue.  The Senate bill was S523-5 and was passed on May 21, 1996.  The bill was then referred to the House for passage but was never addressed.  This is possibly because the House was working on a bill of their own.
     The House decided to hold hearings on the issue before the bill was actually drafted.  This way the issues could be discussed by the local agencies and the community and then could be incorporated into the legislation.  The hearings were held on May 21,1996 before the House Committee on the Judiciary.  During the hearings, there was testimony heard by twelve witnesses.  Of the twelve witnesses, seven of them were members of government agencies explaining the inadequacies of the current law.  The five other witnesses were members of organizations affiliated with churches and minority groups.   The low amount of civilian witnesses could be due to the relative non-controversial nature of the legislation.  A need for agency directors existed to point out where changes were needed from the already existing legislation.  An example of this is the testimony of Department of Justice director John W. Magaw.  During his testimony the point that there is a need to change the law because the existing law had conditions that were hard to meet was expressed.  He pointed out that the existing law had a stipulation in it that the damage to the property must be over 10,000 dollars.  He pointed out that anything under this, the Department of Justice had to prosecute under another section which also had interstate commerce qualifications that...

This is not the end of the termpaper! Register below to see the complete version of this term paper.

Membership Plans	Credit Card	Check

1 month membership

3 month membership (You Save 50%)

6 month membership (You Save 67%)

Copyright © 2002-2007 Mid Term Papers. All rights reserved. This term papers website is used for research purposes only.
If you have forgotten your username or password, please click here.
If you like to cancel your account, please click here.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22