Who makes laws and regulations?

 

You've heard the old joke about laws and sausages -- that you don't want to know how they're made? If you disagree, here's what you should know.


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Legislators make laws. (I.e the “legislative branch” of government)

Administrative agencies, in the “executive branch”, (like the IRS, the FDA, OSHA, Medicare) make regulations.

Regulations are details about the laws that legislators have made. 

Laws and legislation is made in legislative branch.

Not all legislation becomes law. In fact 90% of it never does. The vast majority of it never makes it out of committee.

Federal

Federal Laws

Congress: the House and the Senate.

Federal Regulations 

Once laws are passed, then it is up to administrative agencies to carry them out. These agencies are charged with writing "regulations". The IRS is one such agency. It makes tax regulations that go into detail about how the tax laws should be applied in specific situations. By definition regulations generally are more voluminous than the laws themselves. Because they go into more detail and cover more different specific situations. 

Proposed Regulations: Your chance to give input at “public hearings” 

When agencies are adopting regulations they often have hearings and have public comment about the regulations they are proposing. For example the FTC, the federal trade commission may propose trade regulations and have a period of public comment to discuss them.

The food and drug administration may propose policies about drug prices and have hearings about that.

You can get a full list of government agencies at LegalConsumer.com here.

State Laws and Regulations

In South Dakota things work pretty much the same way but the names of the legislative bodies might be different. For example, the house of representatives might be called an assembly in certain states. In some states the legislative branch only meets a few months a year. The job of the legislative branch is to create laws to deal with the problems of government.

County Laws and Regulations

Counties tend to have rules about what you can and cannot build, and building codes generally. 

Every county has a board of some sort that sets an Agenda for board meetings to discuss things like:

  • the county budget,
  • whether funds should be allocated to some local public purpose, and
  • whether real estate development is allowed to proceed.
  • County bus lines and services

City and Township laws and regulations

  • Sale of Liquor or Marijuana
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Jurisdictional relevance: US

Legal Consumer - South DakotaLaw. The content of this article pertains to all US states and counties.