Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 June 22

= June 22 =

NZ parliamentary bills
In the US Congress, when a member proposes a bill, one of three things happens: it gets passed by both houses and sent to the President, it gets rejected by one of the houses, or it gets ignored by one of the houses. A bill that gets ignored (either by the house where it originated, or by the other house after the first one passed it) is said to "die" at the end of a meeting of Congress — if it hasn't gotten action by the time an election happens and a new set of members takes office, it functionally ceases to exist, and the only way it can be passed into law is if it's re-proposed and goes through the whole process again.

What is the case in New Zealand? Does a bill die after a period of time (and if so, how long?), or is it alive indefinitely? New Zealand House of Representatives doesn't address the question. I'm wondering because of Gadfium's comment about waka-jumping; he says that there's a bill currently pending, but the article doesn't mention a bill any more recent than 2018, and the cited source goes to, which says that it was "discharged on 15 December 2008". In a parliamentary system where government bills almost always pass and other bills don't often, I would guess that a bill of that age would be enacted or rejected or dead by now, but maybe I would think differently if I knew more about NZ political processes. Nyttend backup (talk) 11:43, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Not sure if New Zealand has its own twists, but normally in a Westminster system, law proposals that have not been adopted at the end of a legislative session "die" (dying on the order paper is the term used) and need to be reintroduced at the start of the next session, restarting the whole adoption process from square one. Xuxl (talk) 11:58, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Couldn't find anything specific to New Zealand, but I did find an article about "Dying on the order paper" in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario which also operates under the Westminster system. Alansplodge (talk) 13:58, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm almost certain the term "lapse" is used in Australian parliaments. Never heard of bills "dying" here. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

This is covered here: (section 20 of New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986). Bills lapse on dissolution of Parliament, but at the start of the new Parliament (following an election), any parliamentary business may be reinstated by means of a resolution of the House of Representatives. For example, see (reinstatement motion following the 2017 New Zealand general election). Mathew5000 (talk) 02:07, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Just FYI the legislation relating to Waka-Jumping entered into force in New Zealand on October 4 2018. See Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act 2018 . The new provisions now appear after section 55AA of the Electoral Act 1993 . You can find an article discussing the bill, dating from when the House of Representatives passed it in September 2018, here: . For various criticisms of the legislation, try here:  The Wikipedia article Waka-jumping is out-of-date, it says the bill "is currently before the Select Committee" which has not been true for a while (and as Nyttend mentioned, it links to an old 2005 version instead of the 2018 bill that eventually became law). Mathew5000 (talk) 03:51, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

If it's a "typical" parliamentary system, does the speaker get the privilege of ordering whichever they deem worthy carried over? Traditionally, the clerks will try to keep the papers they think they will need at hand, without regard to the members, so I'd be so far as to suggest that might be the de facto in even non-typical systems. 98.33.89.17 (talk) 02:02, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Problem with Hansard and Lloyd George
The Hansard list of contributions by David Lloyd George stops at 1929, which is obviously wrong. Is there a way of extracting a fuller list of his parliamentary contributions for use in our article? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 14:13, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like neither that site nor the official Hansard site have a way to do that easily. The one you linked to uses google site search as its engine, (and “lloyd george” gives 7,000 hits, while if you try something like "lloyd george" +1930 you get no hits) while the official one says “The vast majority of our historical content was generated by scanning physical copies of bound volumes and converting the output into a format that could be processed for web presentation. As a result, this content does not have the additional metadata associated with our current output, which means that it is currently not possible to search by Member or to aggregate all a Member’s output on an individual page, for example. We will be looking at ways of enriching our historical content as the project progresses.” I don’t suppose the computing desk could help you come up with a clever search strategy? Otherwise all I can think of is making your own extract, manually, from 1929 to 1942, and giving it to the site you linked to post. :( 70.67.193.176 (talk) 14:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

US Supreme Court justices requiring reconfirmation
Our article on John Jay states: "In the waning days of President John Adams's administration, Jay was confirmed by the Senate for another term as Chief Justice, but he declined the position and retired to his farm in Westchester County, New York." I thought that justices "...shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour..." and that they don't require reconfirmation. Is this unique to the position of Chief Justice, or has the procedure simply changed? If so, how was Article III originally interpreted? -- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already?  22:14, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * From what I can see, Jay was Chief Justice up to 1795. He was offered the position again in 1800, hence the second confirmation. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Why did he need to be offered the position again in the first place. Justices serve for life, do they not? -- Puzzledvegetable Is it teatime already?  23:19, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * They can resign (as Jay did when elected Governor of New York) or retire. Blueboar (talk) 23:22, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Right, Justices don't require reconfirmation except in special cases like having resigned or been impeached, or where an Associate Justice is nominated to become the Chief Justice. I suspect that constitutionally there's no requirement for reconfirmation for Justices who take senior status rejoining the Court, but it presumably would be a problem under the statutes defining the Court's size and providing for Justices to take senior status in the first place. 199.66.69.67 (talk) 04:48, 23 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, the reason Jay was confirmed a second time is that he stopped being Chief Justice in 1795 to become Governor of New York. When that term of office ended, the President offered, and the Senate quickly confirmed, to Jay to become Chief Justice again, and he declined.  It's not unusual for a Justice (Chief or Associate) to resign; John Rutledge even served two non-consecutive terms on the Court, having served from 1790-1791, resigned in 1791 to take up the Chief Justice job for his home state of South Carolina, and returned in 1795 to become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  Charles Evans Hughes did the same, with a 14-year gap in the middle where he ran for President and served as Secretary of State.  In both of those cases there needed to be a second confirmation hearing, as each man was not in the job they were nominated for at the time.  There have even been times when a sitting Associate Justice was nominated for Chief Justice, and because of the change of title, there needed to be a new confirmation hearing, Harlan Fiske Stone and William Rehnquist are examples of the latter.  -- Jayron 32 18:05, 25 June 2020 (UTC)