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112 Mich. L. Rev. First Impressions 1 (2013-2014)

handle is hein.journals/mlro112 and id is 1 raw text is: ONE REDEEMING QUALITY ABOUT THE 112TH CONGRESS: REFOCUSING ON DESCRIPTIVE RATHER THAN EVOCATIVE SHORT TITLES Brian Christopher Jones* INTRODUCTION The consensus with regard to the 112th Congress is that it was a massive failure': the Congress passed fewer laws than in previous years, and the contemptuous debates over the debt ceiling and the so-called fiscal cliff' did not win this Congress many supporters. So what redeeming qualities could have been present in such an irredeemable Congress? I believe that there was at least one: a returning focus on descriptive short titles for laws, rather than a perpetuation of the evocative and tendentious short titles that have been commonplace over the past couple of decades. A recent publication of mine explored what I called the Congressional Short Title (R)Evolution,2 for over the past few decades, short titles have become more frequently used, longer, and more likely to employ acronyms or personalization; they have also increasingly used evocative words while * Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica. The author would like to thank the Michigan Law Review staff for their helpful comments and assistance throughout the publication process. Additionally, the author would like to thank Alexander E. Darrah, Barrister-At-Law, for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this Essay. Any errors in this Essay are the author's alone. 1. In fact, The Week put together a list of the most insulting media labels for the 112th Congress. They are as follows: (1) most dysfunctional ever, Sacramento Bee; (2) crawling out with the soft whimper of failure, Politico; (3) the most worthless, incompetent, do-nothing gathering of lawmakers in the nation's history, LA Times; (4) took incompetence to a higher level, The Daily Beast; (5) the do-nothing 112th Congress, Think Progress; (6) clowns, The Washington Times; (7) It achieved nothing, Bloomberg; (8) most unproductive session since the 1940s, The Huffington Post; (9) least effective and most disliked, Business Insider; and (10) least productive in recorded history, Allvoices. Harold Maass, 10 Insulting Labels for the Outgoing 112th Congress, THE WEEK (Jan. 3 2013), http://theweek.com/article/index/238354/10-insulting-labels- for-the-outgoing- 112th-congress. 2. Brian Christopher Jones, The Congressional Short Title (R)Evolution: Changing the Face of America's Public Laws, 101 KY. L.J. ONLINE 42-64 (2013), http://www.kentuckylawjournal.org/jones-short -title-revolution/.

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