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29 Colum. L. Rev. 381 (1929)
The Office of the Legislative Counsel

handle is hein.journals/clr29 and id is 449 raw text is: THE OFFICE OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL To Columbia University there may be attributed a substantial measure of responsibility for the creation of the Office of the Legisla- tive Counsel of the Congress. The Office is in part the outgrowth of the University's interest in public affairs and its policy of encouraging scientific participation in them by its law and other faculties.' More immediately, however, the establishment of the Office is attributable to the University's action in affording Congress a practical demonstra- tion of legislative draftsmanship. THE LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING RESEARCH FUND In 1911 the University received from Joseph P. Chamberlain a gift for the establishment of a Legislative Drafting Research Fund. The gift was to be expended by trustees appointed by the University, for research in problems of legislation and administration, with par- ticular view to the better drafting of statutes. As the original trustees, the University selected the present Director of the Fund, Mr. Chamber- lain, Professor of Public Law at Columbia University; John Bassett Moore, recently Judge of the Permanent Court for International Justice, then Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy of the University; and Harlan Fiske Stone, Justice of the United States Supreme Court, then Dean of the Law School of the University. The research activities were placed under the direction of a staff headed by Middleton Beaman, Thomas I. Parkinson, and Professor Chamberlain.2 EARLY CONGRESSIONAL ACTION The directors of the Fund early came to the conclusion that the scientific development of statute law required as one important con- tributing feature the establishment and maintenance of legislative draft- ing agencies operating in connection with State Legislatures and Con- gress. The idea was not novel even at that time, and the Congress it- self had given considerable thought to the matter. Thus during 1912 extensive hearings were held by the House Committee on the Library on certain bills for the establishment of a congressional reference bureau in the Library of Congress.3 There appeared at the hearings several House leaders, the Librarian of Congress, the chairman of the Presi- 'See ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERsITy (1923) 3-5. , At that time Mr. Beaman was Law Librarian of the Library of Congress and Mr. Parkinson, Counsel for the Bureau of Municipal Research, New York City. 'SEN. REP. No. 1271, 62d Cong., pp. 71-145.

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