Computer paves way for new code of Illinois laws

Only the legislature can revise the statutes completely. It has been more than a century since this was last done. The arrangement of laws now in use is obsolete and confusing. When the bill drafting agency put the Revised Statutes into a computer a few years ago, first permission had to be secured from the private publisher which owns the copyright HAVE YOU EVER tried to locate a provision in the laws of Illinois? If you have, you know what a confusing, illogical assortment of chapters and sections make up the four red-bound volumes called Illinois Revised Statutes. It has been more than a century since the legislature revised the statutes. Meanwhile, the private publisher of the statutes has had to create what order he could with a statutory framework that has long been obsolete. Only the legislature can approve a complete revision of the laws, but before the advent of computer programs to assist in the necessary analysis, revision, and indexing, such a task was almost impossible. Computers that can help do this job are now operating in Illinois, and it is probably only a matter of time until the legislature creates the machinery to overhaul the laws. The process is certain to be followed closely by the lawyers; the lobbyists for the many professions, occupations, businesses and interests regulated by the state; and the spokesmen for Illinois' local governments and school districts. They will want to be sure that a revision does not change the meaning of a law that affects them. And some will see in the revision a chance to quietly eliminate provisions they don't like.

The only officially published laws in Illinois today are the session laws. These consist mainly of amendments to existing laws, some new enactments, appropriation acts, and several acts of a temporary nature. The publication is titled Laws of Illinois and is a series of hard-bound, yellow-covered volumes compiled and published after each legislative session by the Index Division of the Secretary of State's Office. The problem with these volumes is that they only show additions and changes to the law and so are only of limited value when consulted independently. If you're not a lawyer or a legal researcher, finding your way through this multi-layered statutory maze can be dispiriting, to say the least.

For the current version of all laws of a permanent and general nature, you must turn to Illinois Revised Statutes, published by the West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minn. Here, laws are arranged by topic in chapters that range from Chapter 1, Abatement, to Chapter 148, Wills and Trusts. By contrast, the order of acts in the session laws is determined by the date when each public act becomes law. Ideally, the most recent edition of the Illinois Revised Statutes will contain the current version of law pertaining to each topic. If no amendments to laws on a given topic are passed during a given session of the General Assembly, the session laws will have nothing on that topic. But the Illinois Revised Statutes continue to show all existing laws — or chapters — whether or not the General Assembly has acted upon them in a given session. The Illinois Revised Statutes, do not, of course, contain appropriation acts or laws of a temporary nature, such as those creating study commissions expiring in two years.

The 1973 edition of West's Illinois Revised Statutes is a four-volume set, containing 7,612 pages, including an index. Updating this edition is a 1974 Supplement, a red soft-covered 4 10- page pamphlet in the same format as the bound volumes. West Publishing Co. also issues a pamphlet series, Illinois Legislative Service, which includes acts that became law too late for inclusion in the Supplement. By the time this article is in print, the 1975 edition of the statutes will probably have been published, and they will again keep up by issuing supplements.

February 1976/Illinois Issues/17

'The computer . . . has revolutionized the technical aspects of law making.' Two systems are used — for searches and for drafting

West owns the copyright for its Illinois Revised Statutes and also the copyright for its separately published Smith-Hurd Illinois Annotated Statutes. This is a multi-volume set containing abstracts of case decisions and of attorney general's opinions, cross references to other West legal publications, and historical notes. Pocket parts and replacement volumes keep this series up to date.

When the Illinois Legislative Reference Bureau in 1969 installed a computerized system for searching the Illinois Revised Statutes, the text of these had to be entered into the system, and permission from West was requested. West granted a limited license restricting use of its product to the members and agencies of the legislature and the attorney general. In return, the Bureau agreed to furnish to West copies of public acts as they became law. West does not, of course, "own" the text of particular laws; the firm does have proprietary rights in its arrangement of chapters and sections found in the Illinois Revised Statutes.

Confusion in present system
The existing system of chapters and sections is 102 years old, and as new laws have been passed and have not fit into 19th century chapter topics, fractional chapter numbers have come into use. For example: Ch. 15 1/2, Aviation; Ch. 48 1/2, Engineers and Engineering; Ch. 67 1/2, Housing and Redevelopment; Ch. 91 1/2, Mental Health; Ch. 95 1/2, Motor Vehicles; and Ch. Ill 2/3, Public Utilities. Materials in some old chapters have been shifted elsewhere in the Illinois Revised Statutes. The user who turns to Ch. 86, Lunatics, Idiots, Drunkards, and Spendthrifts, is directed to Ch. 3, Administration of Estates. Similarly, Ch, 17, Bastardy, is a blank; the user is directed to a new chapter, 106 3/4 Paternity.

The numbering of sections has also grown complex, e.g., Ch. 127, sec. 683bl08b.6, a section of the Personnel Code added in 1967 and dealing with the rule making powers of the director of personnel with respect to the period of probation for new merit system employees.

A comprehensive revision by the legislature would involve a rearrangement of laws into a logical system meeting modern needs. Newchapter and section divisions would eliminate these complicated numbers and obsolete chapter topics.

Computer as a legislative tool
The use of the computer has revolutionized the technical aspects of law making in Illinois. Two systems are used, "SIRS" and "ALTER." SIRS is used for "searching" the statutes, and ALTER is used for bill drafting. Both systems were marketed by Data Retrieval Corporation of America in Milwaukee, Wis., and installed by them under contract with the Legislative Reference Bureau. Both depend on storing in the memory of a computer the entire text of the Illinois Revised Statutes — some 5,900,000 words when this was first done in 1969.

When it is necessary to find statutory provisions on a particular topic, SIRS ("Statutory Information Retrieval System") permits a search for a particular word or combination of words. For example, when there was a need to delete references to "Auditor of Public Accounts" (an office abolished under the new Constitution) and substitute the title of the successor office, the "Comptroller, " when appropriate, SIRS provided the necessary references overnight.

ALTER, which stands for "Automated Legal Text Entry and Revision," was installed in Illinois in 1970. Its significant features are:

1. Amendments to existing laws can be prepared with a minimum for typing; only the changes need to be entered.

2. Material in a document can be moved or erased by a simple command.

3. The system can be used through typewriter terminals or cathode ray tubes.

4. Formatting, including line numbering and pagination, of a document can be automatic.

5. Documents can be printed on a typewriter terminal or printed by highspeed tine printers or put on computer tapes for (a) storage, (b) generating ¦ microfiche, or (c) type composition for printing.

ALTER is not limited to bill drafting. In 1975, its use in Illinois was expanded to include preparation of the legislative journals and the enrolling and engrossing of bills (getting them into final form for action by the governor).

Computerization of enrolling and engrossing removes a major stumbling block to speeding up the publication of statutes, whether as session laws or as revised statutes. Because the texts of all bills are stored in the computer, any amendments to be merged into a text can be made using the ALTER system with a minimum for ¦ typing. Thus, the final bills can be prepared more quickly and delivered sooner, which shortens the delay between final legislative action and the beginning of the 60-day period in which the governor must act. Next, when the bill becomes law and is given a public act number, it may be converted on computer into a public act and made available for use in publishing the session laws.

Last summer, one publisher reported to the secretary of state that they could use computer tapes furnished by the state to print the session laws in their customary format, but in less time and at a lower cost. The information came too late for contracting for the 1975 session laws but use of the new approach can be anticipated for 1976. This is welcome news because in recent years, the session laws for a given calendar year have not been available until the following June, which is a lag of nine months for most laws, since the uniform effective date (which applies to most laws) is October 1.

An equally important times aver is that the state's computer banks can be updated to reflect new laws very soon after bills have been signed. In the past, copies of new acts had to be sent to the Milwaukee firm for keypunching and verification, with considerable delays in integrating them into the statutory base. The new capability will significantly speed up bill drafting and the ability to "search" the statutes which often precedes bill drafting.

But most important is that the computer system now makes possible what the Legislative Reference Bureau in a study in 1967 had concluded was utterly impossible: a complete, official, bulk revision of the Illinois statutes.

18/ February 1976 /Illinois Issues

Other states have recently used the computer as an indispensable tool in completely revising their statutes. Examples are the Indiana Code of 1971, that state's first official revision in this century, and the 1974 Colorado Revised Statutes. Other examples of completed revisions include those of Connecticut and Mississippi. The experience in these states suggests some basic considerations that should be kept in mind:

1. Statutory law should be expressed as simply and concisely as possible, in modern language, and be available to the public within 30 days from the date of enactment of new laws or amendments to laws.

2. The statutes should be consistent, both in the use of language and in the style in which they are drafted as well as in their arrangement and numbering, so that they can be more readily understood.

3. The statutes should be completely indexed and cross-referenced to aid both in finding the law and in understanding its interrelations.

4. An official revision or compilation of Illinois laws can be viewed as essential to the effective workings of government and society. The state government itself, rather than a private publisher, should be responsible for preparing and publishing the statutes in a current and useful format.

5. The revision should be under state copyright, rather than under the control of a private publisher. This would permit use of the entire revision or of any segment of the statutes for any public purpose, such as preparation of pamphlet copies of the Motor Vehicle Code, School Code, Probate Code, etc.

Of course, a statutory revision does not become official unless enacted by the General Assembly and approved by the governor. It follows that the product of revision efforts must be accurate, credible, and desirable in order to garner the votes for passage. Resistance to change can be anticipated, so the new product must be shown to be superior.

Providing specifically for liaison with representatives of the organized bar, the courts and the law schools can serve both to reduce some of the resistance to change as well as to improve the reliability of the revision product by giving these persons — who are most aware of the impact of the statutes on the public — the opportunity to give suggestions.

Cooperation with law book publishers is desirable. The state should hold the copyright on the statutes, their arrangement, etc., but the state need not itself print or market its revised statutes. Private publishers could be licensed to do so.

Specific legislative staff should be assigned to statutory revision. Illinois' annual and continuing sessions make it impractical to look to the same people who draft bills to find time to work on a total revision. Whether this can be done better by creating a new agency or by creating a separate division within the Legislative Reference Bureau needs to be carefully considered. Having a new special staff in the existing agency provides back-up draftsmen and typists during peak loads and may also provide back-up staff for the revision group as its deadlines approach. The danger is that the revision personnel may be drawn away from their work to feed the legislative appetite for drafting hundreds of bills.

The role of the governor in the legislative process must also be considered in the deadline for a complete statutory revision. As many as 90 days can (and sometimes do) elapse between passage of a bill and action by the governor, and an additional month or two in the case of vetoes, especially amendatory vetoes. This makes it difficult to fix a certain time for the preparation of copy for publication of revised permanent statutes. The cooperation of the governor's office in minimizing the time lag will be important.

When is action likely?
The 1975 session of the General Assembly considered two bills relating to statutory revision. Only one of them, H. B. 1051, became law (Public Act 79- 662). This act creates a temporary commission to search the statutes "with a view to determining what laws are obsolete, outdated, or unnecessary and should be repealed." The principal sponsor was Rep. Robert Terzich (D., Chicago).

A second bill, H. B. 2941, wound up on the interim study calendar. It would create the office of reviser of statutes. Significantly, it was drafted at the behest of the legislators who make up the governing board of the Legislative Reference Bureau, although the principal sponsor was Rep. Roland F. Tip- sword (D., Taylorville), not currently a board member.

Given adequate preparation time, a bulk revision of the statutes could be accomplished in as little as one year. Timing is important. A revision should be in force at the beginning of a new General Assembly to serve as a base for drafting new bills. It is almost certainly too late in 1976 for such a project to be completed and in effect by the opening of the 1977 session. It is possible, however, if preparatory action is taken this year, to have a revised code in effect on January 1, 1979. That would be 105 years after the last official revision in 1874.�

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