Short and long titles
In certain jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and other Westminster-influenced jurisdictions, as well as the United States and the Philippines, primary legislation has both a short title and a long title.
The long title is the formal title appearing at the head of a statute or other legislative instrument. The long title is intended to provide a summarised description of the purpose or scope of the instrument. Like other descriptive components of an act, the long title seldom affects the operative provisions of an act, except where the operative provisions are unclear or ambiguous and the long title provides a clear statement of the legislature's intention.
The short title is the formal name by which legislation may by law be cited. It contrasts with the long title which, while usually being more fully descriptive of the legislation's purpose and effects, is generally too unwieldy for most uses. For example, the short title House of Lords Act 1999 contrasts with the long title An Act to restrict membership of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage; to make related provision about disqualifications for voting at elections to, and for membership of, the House of Commons; and for connected purposes.
Significance
Long titles
In the United Kingdom, the long title is important since, under the procedures of Parliament, a bill cannot be amended to go outside the scope of its long title. For that reason, modern long titles tend to be rather vague, ending with the formulation "and for connected purposes". The long title of an older act is sometimes termed its rubric, because it was sometimes printed in red.Short titles for acts of Parliament were not introduced until the mid-19th century, and were not provided for every act passed until late in the century; as such, the long title was used to identify the act. Short titles were subsequently given to many unrepealed acts at later dates; for example, the Bill of Rights, an act of 1689, was given that short title by the Short Titles Act 1896, having until then been formally referred to only by its long title, An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown. Similarly, in the US, the Judiciary Act of 1789, which was ruled unconstitutional in part by Marbury v. Madison, was called "An Act to establish the Judicial Courts of the United States".
The long title was traditionally followed by the preamble, an optional part of an act setting out a number of preliminary statements of facts similar to recitals, each starting ''Whereas...''
Short titles
Unlike the long title, which precedes the preamble and enacting formula, and thus sits outside the main body of text, the short title for modern legislation is explicitly defined by a specific section, typically at the very end or very beginning of the main text. As with the above example, short titles are generally made up of just a few words that describe in broad terms the area of law being changed or the thing affected, followed by the word "Act" and then the year in which the legislation is formally enacted. Occasionally, the word "Act" may be replaced with another descriptor. Common examples are "Code" and "Charter".A notable exception is Israel, in which this convention is reversed. The short title sits outside the main body of legislation, and the summary description of the law, which is made optional, is defined by a specific section if existing. For example, the Combating Iran's Nuclear Program Act, which under the usual convention would have begun with the long title
and whose first section might have read
actually begins with the short title
and its first section reads
The Australian state of Victoria, since 1986, follows a similar practice, having a title comparable to a short title outside the main body of the legislation and a purpose section establishing the purpose of the legislation. Bills continue to have long titles so that the scoping rules described in the [|previous section] continue to apply, but are removed and noted in the endnotes upon enactment.
The titles of legislation enacted by the United States Congress, if they include a year, invariably add the preposition "of" between the word "Act" and the year. Compare the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992, Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Even if no year was included in the official short title enacted by Congress, it is traditional always to precede the year with an "of" if it needs to be appended in prose after the short title. This convention is followed by most but not all U.S. states; for example, the Act of the Pennsylvania legislature that consolidated the governments of the city of Philadelphia and Philadelphia County is generally called the Act of Consolidation, 1854. The vast majority of acts passed by the Parliament of Canada do not include the year of enactment as part of the short title. In acts passed by the Congress of the Philippines, titling of legislation primarily follows the U.S. convention, although many acts contain the word "Law" instead of the more conventional "Act" either at the end of the title or before "of " if they are comprehensive.
Since the early 20th century, it has become popular in the United States to include the names of key legislators in the short titles of the most important acts. This was at first done informally; that is, the names appeared in legal treatises and court opinions but were not part of the statute as enacted. Eventually members of Congress began to formally write their own names into short titles, as in the Hart–Scott–Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. In some states, like California, some short titles consist only of the names of the key legislators, as in the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act, the statutory basis of the "5150" involuntary psychiatric hold used for temporarily detaining psychiatric patients.
Draft legislation also uses short titles, but substitutes the word "Bill" for "Act".
Style
Definite article
The Australian Guide to Legal Citation recommends that the definite article at the beginning of the "statute title" should be omitted when citing a statute of the United Kingdom.Comma
Originally short titles had a comma preceding the year. Whether this is retained or not depends on the country involved: it has been dropped in Ireland and the United Kingdom, but retained in Canada.Ireland
In citing an act by its short title, a comma immediately before a reference to a year and a comma immediately after such a reference that is not required for the purpose of punctuation may be omitted.United Kingdom
It is not necessary to use the comma as it is not part of an act of Parliament; although normal punctuation is now used by draftsmen, and is included in King's Printer's copies of acts of Parliament.The comma preceding the calendar year in printed copies of acts is omitted on the authority of a note by Sir Noel Hutton QC, First Parliamentary Counsel, as to which see "The Citation of Statutes" 82 LQR 24-24. The validity of this note is questioned by Halsbury's Laws of England, Fourth Edition, Reissue, Volume 44, footnote 10 to paragraph 1268.
Glanville Williams said that it "seems sensible" to omit the comma preceding the calendar year in references to acts passed before 1963.
United States
An act of Congress that appropriates federal funds to specific federal government departments, agencies and programs has a comma rather than of between "Appropriations Act" and the year of passage, beginning in the 2000s. However, a 1990s example of this titling pattern is the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Appropriations Act, 1999.Interpretation
In Re Boaler, Buckley LJ said:In R v Wheatley, Bridge LJ said of the Explosives Act 1875 and the Explosive Substances Act 1883:
If much of an older act was repealed by the time a short title was assigned to it, the short title may describe only the parts in force at the time of assignment. For example, the act 59 George III c.84 as enacted regulated publicly funded roadbuilding throughout Ireland, but by 1873 the only unrepealed section was one making Kinsale a barony, so the 1896 short title is "Kinsale Act 1819".
Effect of repeal
Ireland
Notwithstanding the repeal of an enactment giving a short title to an act, the act may, without prejudice to any other mode of citation, continue to be cited by that short title.United Kingdom
An act may continue to be cited by the short title authorised by any enactment notwithstanding the repeal of that enactment.History
Since the second half of the nineteenth century, short titles have become the usual method of referencing earlier statute law within legislation itself. In the UK this replaced the earlier method of citing the long title together with the chapter number and the regnal year of the parliamentary session in which it received royal assent. For example, modern legislation would simply refer to "the Evidence Act 1845", whereas in the past it would have been necessary to use wording such as "the Act passed in the eighth and ninth year of Her Majesty's reign chapter one hundred and thirteen intitled 'An Act to facilitate the Admission in Evidence of certain official and other Documents.Short titles were introduced because the titles of statutes had become so long that they were no longer a useful means of citation. For example, the title of 19 Geo. 2. c. 26 ran to 65 lines of King's Printer and to over 400 words.
Short titles were first introduced for acts of Parliament in the 1840s. Amending acts also began to take the opportunity to create short titles for earlier acts as well as for themselves. Eventually the Short Titles Act 1892 was passed to create short titles for almost all remaining legislation. This statute was repealed and replaced by the Short Titles Act 1896, which conferred short titles on about 2,000 acts. The Short Titles Act 1951 conferred short titles on 179 acts applying to Northern Ireland. The Statute Law Revision Act 1964 conferred short titles on 164 pre-union acts of the Parliament of Scotland. Further short titles were given by the Statute Law Revision Act 1948, the Statute Law Act 1977 and the Statute Law Act 1978.
In Ireland, ex post facto short titles have been conferred by the Short Titles Act 1962, the Statute Law Revision Act 2007, the Statute Law Revision Act 2009 and the Statute Law Revision Act 2012.