Digital Signature Legality for Letter of Intent in United States

How to eSign a document: digital signature legality for Letter of Intent in United States

okay so today I wanted to explain letters of intent found in the assembly and Senate daily journals and why I think unfortunately a bill author gets short shrift from the courts you know one of the long-running points of contention is when the California courts examine what we call legislative intent and the Judiciary in this state has a general disdain for statements made by the authors of legislation and they don't give them much weight or don't afford them much legal weight in determining intent because they look look at Collective intent rather than the individual Bill author's intent so even when you have some clear language statements that a company bills which is from time to time um about a dozen or so bills in the assembly and Senate each year there's an effort for the author of a bill to offer guidance and state the purpose and intent of their legislation however because a Bill's author is just one of 120 state legislators he or she does not speak for the legislative body as a whole and as a result the courts in California generally offer little deference to the views of the author of a bill I don't think this should be the case because this lack of deference provided to the author of a bill may stem from the Court's perception of the Rough and Tumble political realities of a legislative process but in order to address the Judiciary stated concerns with lawmakers lead letters of intent I think there is a solution to ensure that these letters do in fact reflect the legislative body as a whole I do think as a general rule legislative intent uh is and frankly should be generally attributable to the legislative body as a whole unfortunately the reality is that few legislators are well versed in the provision of the hundreds if not thousands of bills that come before them during the course of each year of the two-year California legislative session on the other hand the author of a bill is probably the most knowledgeable about many of these specific provisions of the bill and is probably in the best position to speak most clearly about the intent behind that legislation the author can explain why specific words or phrases were or were not used and Incorporated in that bill and what ultimately becomes the statutory language as a result I think that the courts in this state should actually provide greater deference to the statements of those that are most familiar with the contents of a bill and ultimately a statute in order to best understand the intent of the bill as a result following the recommendations described in this video podcast I hope that authors letters of intent in the assembly and Senate daily journals will ultimately carry significant weight in determining the legislature's intent so by way of background as the courts have said in cases like Upland police officers versus the city of Upland in 2003 or dynamed versus The Fair Employment and Housing Commission in 1987. the fundamental rule of statutory construction is that a court should ascertain the intent of the legislature so as to effectuate the purpose of the law in people versus Arias in 2008 the the court said if the words in the statute do not by themselves provide a reliable indicator of legislative intent statutory ambiguities often may be resolved by examining the context in which the language appears and adopting the construction which best serves to harmonize the statute internally and with related statutes so with that uh background in mind again one method to help determine the legislative intent of a specific bill is a letter to the journal and the letters are published in the assembly Daily Journal by an assembly Bill author or the Senate Daily Journal by a Senate Bill author and these letters for which there are perhaps two dozen or so each year out of what a thousand or so bills that reach the governor's desk sometimes more sometimes less they are often used by a Bill's author in those circumstances to perhaps explain an ambiguity or the purpose of particular changes in the law in the assembly in the Senate these letters to the journal are definitely a formal matter the letter has to be on the legislator's letterhead signed by the legislator the general custom and practice of the two houses of the California legislature is to have the respective leadership staff both majority and minority parties review the letter as well as the policy committee and their assembly or Senate Republican caucus consultant uh and the this is basically used to determine whether anyone has an objection to the contents of the letter um again the policy committee Consultants are usually consulted um there may be a request for revisions or changes to that letter and of course ultimately the speaker's office in the assembly reviews and approves these letters by assembly authors and the Senate President Pro tems office staff reviews the letters by Senate authors and again the two Republican leaders have a similar opportunity to review and approve these letters now the courts in California can use these uh letters to the Daily Journal as extrinsic AIDS in determining the intent of the legislature however there are also other extrinsic aids for example uh different versions earlier versions amended versions of the bill the committee analysis or analyzes the floor analyzes and other items such as that are usually given greater weight than these letters to the journal by Bill authors again that's because the courts view these other documents as being expressions of the legislative body as a whole and less so with the bill authors letters again in my mind that the journal letters may be the best indicator available regarding the intent of the legislature because the Bill's author is usually most intimately involved and thus in my mind they should be granted equal if not frankly greater deference by the courts than these other documents that are used by extrinsic or as extensive evidence by the courts the determination of legislative intent because sometimes there are ambiguities or instances in which there are legitimate legal disputes between parties as to what statutory language May mean or what was intended by the language contained in a particular Bill ultimately becoming a statute in these cases both parties to the litigation or the dispute are wanting to argue that their interpretation is the correct one that should be adopted by the court and ultimately it is up to the Judiciary the judicial branch of state government to determine who whose view is going to be deemed the correct one um So based upon the assumption that all legislators read all of the materials before casting their votes which is perhaps an unrealistic view in all cases given what actually happens in the legislative process again when legislators take several thousand votes on hundreds if not one or two thousand bills ultimately per year that statement coming from me is not meant as a criticism of the legislature or any individual legislators themselves in my mind it's just an acknowledgment that legislators can't be expected to read every line of every Bill and every line of every background material for those bills such as all the committee analyzes and the floor analyzes and for each of them to thoroughly understand the intent behind each and every of those thousand plus measures and even the particular wording that's used in that legislation when they're casting all of these votes I think the other important point to understand is that California's legislative history is lacking particularly in comparison to the materials produced by the U.S Congress for example again similar to the prior concern I expressed this is not a criticism of the California process but nor of the valuable and very hard-working staff of the legislature particularly committee Consultants who prepare these analyzes of pending legislation I think my statement is really just an acknowledgment that the ability to produce really insightful material when they have to analyze so many bills in a short amount of time due to the very tight legislative deadlines is in many cases unrealistic and if you review a lot of the committee and floor analyzes they don't often contain specifics about particular language that was used or perhaps not used in the bill they certainly did discuss in detail what is existing law what changes does the bill propose to make to existing laws or adding new laws and of course the arguments of the author and certainly of the proponents and the opponents of bills but they're unable to go into great depth as to the actual language you know in the federal Congress the Committees use a markup session where they delve more deeply into the legislative language contained in these Federal bills and so the federal legislators end up reviewing in detail the the language of the bill and often discussing and debating the Bill's individual provisions and of course in the Congressional Record there are transcripts of these hearings and floor debates so there's much more by way of extrinsic aids for the federal Judiciary to review in the California legislature on the other hand committees rarely get into the details of Bill language there may be debate over the general policy of a particular bill but rarely is there a lot of in-depth discussion about the bills uh actual statutory language so the documents that are so heavily relied upon by the courts like Bill analyzes in my mind are often not that helpful in resolving ambiguities in the legislative language and that's because it's usually not the policy of a bill that is litigated or that's in dispute rather It's usually the particular language contained or not contained for that matter in a statute um and the underlying bill that's usually the central issue in a dispute as I mentioned again at the federal level there's the benefit of the Congressional Record basically a Verbatim transcript of debate and discussion regarding patenting Federal legislation that's obviously very helpful to help determine legislative intent conversely the assembly Daily Journal and the Senate Daily Journal do not contain uh details about legislative debate thus the main source of legislative intent in the California legislature is again committee analyzes uh and unfortunately as I have enumerated already that there's usually a lack of detail or insight into specific build language that was or was not used in the bill um because of the limitations in utilizing some of these extrinsic aids to determine Insight or understanding into the language used by the legislature the courts in California and their Reliance on certain legislative materials uh clearly is important and appropriate but again this is why I think our state courts take an unnecessarily narrow view of which items can be appropriately used to determine the intent of the legislature I also think here I'll say that one possible reason in my mind is that I think the judicial branch lacks a fundamental understanding of the legislative process and what happens with bills when they're considered and voted upon and again I think that's one reason why letters to the journal should be given greater deference by the Judiciary you know letters to the journal are also occasionally used when no further amendments to a bill are allowed to be made for example we might be in the 72-hour window before the legislature is scheduled to adjourn and so a letter to the journal might be used to address any lingering concerns with the bill language um again these Journal letters I think from the Bill's author are strong evidence of intent so so that is why you know I come to the conclusion that they ought to be given equal weight if not more by the courts in determining legislative intent um I would go so far as to say it's probably the case that in many instances not all of them but in many of the instances the letter to the journal from the Bill's author may be actually the best evidence so in the Carter versus the California Department of Veterans Affairs 2006 uh Case by the California Supreme Court they said that we're an author's statements appear to be part of the debate on the legislation and were communicated to other legislators we can regard them as evidence of legislative intent so remember that they appear to be part of the debate and were communicated to other legislators So based upon this guidance from the California Supreme Court in the Carter decision I think these letters to the assembly Daily Journal and Senate Daily Journal must be circulated among the members of the assembly or Senate prior to the final floor votes on the particular bill this does not occur unfortunately today those are all adopted generally at the end of session in one Fell Swoop after the votes are already cast so in my mind if you follow this approach in the legislature it'll ensure in theory at least that all legislators in that particular house has been given notice of the letter and an opportunity to review it prior to voting on The Measure um and this way it meets the uh two prongs of the Carter decision again did the author's statement appear to be part of the legislative debate and was the author's statement communicated to other legislators so in this case the courts could more readily accept these letters to the journal and give them the way that I think they deserve in determining proper legislative content intent but it's going to require the California legislature to adopt a different process by which they publish letters to the Senate and assembly daily journals by Bill authors