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97 Law Libr. J. 169 (2005)
What's in a Statute Name?

handle is hein.journals/llj97 and id is 167 raw text is: Practicing Reference... What's in a Statute Name?* Mary Whisner Thoughts about the CAN-SPAM Act over the breakfast table lead Ms. Whisner to explore various practices associated with naming statutes, with a side trip to locate the origins of a standard research tool, the popular name table. i CAN-SPAM' is perhaps the cleverest statute name I have heard. The statute is an effort to reduce the amount of unsolicited commercial e-mail-the inbox clutter we know as spare. And so someone came up with a statute title (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) that spells out what the statute is supposed to accomplish. Wow. Thinking about CAN- SPAM's apt acronym at the breakfast table one morning2 led to a string of ques- tions. When did Congress start using acronyms that spelled out words suggestive of the meaning of a statute? I thought of the USA PATRIOT Act and the WARN Act. When did Congress start including short title sections in bills? The ques- tions kept swirling in my mind, long after I had finished that morning's cereal. Happily, I work in a law library and have access to resources that can help me find answers to questions like these. I offer here some of what I have learned, for you to take in at your breakfast table or at your desk at work. 2 The popular names of statutes fall into at least these four categories: named with descriptive words (the Civil Rights Act of 19643), sometimes abbreviated to their initials (NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act4); named after sponsors (the Sherman Act,5 the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act6); * © Mary Whisner, 2005. ** Assistant Librarian for Reference Services, Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, Washington. 1. Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act), Pub. L. No. 108-187, 117 Stat. 2699 (2003). 2. As I recall, I was reading Paul Jamieson, $toppAng $p@m!!: The Private Sector Needs to Regulate Spam Because the Government Can't, LEGAL AFFAIRS, July-Aug. 2004, at 23. By then, the law was six months old, but I guess I hadn't been keeping up-or I just hadn't been struck by the name before. 3. Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241 (1964). 4. Pub. L. No. 91-190, 83 Stat. 852 (1970). 5. Act of July 2, 1890, ch. 647, 26 Stat. 209. 6. Pub. L. No. 93-637, 88 Stat. 2183 (1975). (The U.S.C.A. Popular Names Table indicates that this law is sometimes also known as the Lemon Law, but that's another category that I won't explore now.)

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