14 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
prepare bills at the request of the committees or members of either 
House." 
There is also a sort of bill-drafting commission in South Carolina. In 
1868 the attorney-general was instructed to assist in the preparation of 
legislative documents and bills when requested by either house.? “In 
1880 he was empowered to require the aid of the state solicitors? in the 
eight judicial districts to assist him in this work.4 
In the legislative reference division of the State Library of Wisconsin. 
there are three draftsmen, and although all bills introduced are not 
required to be submitted to them, the draftsmen have proved so useful 
that, as a matter of fact, about nine-tenths of the bills pass through their 
hands before becoming laws. 
The preparation of a bill is a work requiring great skill and efficiency 
that can come only as the result of experience. The parliament of Eng- 
land has had for long years a bill-drafting expert. No bill is introduced 
in that body that has not been through the hands of the official draftsman. 
He is thoroughly learned in the common and statute law, and is thereby 
able to give the proposed statute its most effective form. Hence the 
lucidity and conciseness of the British statutes as compared with the 
common obscurity of the product of the American legislatures. 
The attainments necessary to a legislative draftsman have been thus 
stated: 
It is not enough to attain to a degree of precision which a person reading in good 
faith can understand; but it is necessary to attain, if possible, to a degree of precision 
which a person reading in bad faith cannot misunderstand. It is all the better if he cannot 
pretend to misunderstand it.s 
A legislative draftsman is more necessary in America than in England, 
as here the form of government is determined according to the doctrine 
of the balance of powers, and as the supreme courts in the various states 
have the power to declare acts of the legislature unconstitutional, it is 
all the more important to have the law in constitutional form when it is 
x Laws of New York, rgo1, chap. 88. 
2 South Carolina Statutes at Large, Vol. XIV, No. 3. 
3 South Carolina Statutes at Large, Vol. XVII, No. 240. 
4 WuittEn, Review of Legislation (New York State Library Bulletin, No. 72, p. 30). 
s Justice Stephen, quoted in REINscH, of. cit., p. 328. 
