IntroductionThis assignment will require that you observe a Congressional committee hearing, con-duct research on the topic, and report your findings. Committees are the workhorses ofCongress, and much of the legwork regarding the construction of legislation occurs at thisstage of the process. This assignment will acclimate you to the inner workings of thisstage of the legislative process.The AssignmentYour job in this assignment is to:•Watch at least 1 hour of a legislative committee session (of your choice). Rulescommittees will get you straight to some legislation. Other committees will includea mix of hearings on specific legislation, while others will be focused on informationand/or policy discussions.•Identify and describe one piece of legislation or the topic of interest that is beingdiscussed by the Committee.•If a bill is being discussed:–Identify the bill (HR 31, S 2314, e.g.).–Provide a summary of the bill (This bill would…e.g.).•If the committee is not discussing a specific bill:–Identify the topic of the hearing (In this hearing, the committee is discussing…,e.g.)–Discuss some of the points brought up in the hearing (Some members wereconcerned about…, e.g.).1
•You will also need to engage in some outside research on that bill/topic. You donot need a prescribed number of sources, but the source material you utilize shouldbe high-quality information (no user-generated content, e.g.). For example, if youwatch a committee hearing on hemp laws in the United States, you may consultthe literature to see what impacts hemp legalization may bring. Or, if you watcha committee hearing on the impacts of covid-19 on education, you may want toconduct research and include a description of the data on those impacts. You havesome flexibility here. Feel free to consult with me as to what your ideas are, orwhere to go for your research. Google scholar and the University library are bothgreat first-run attempts at conducting your research.•Identify and describe the discussion around the legislation/topic. For example,were experts called in to testify? Was there heated debate between members ofthe committee? Did other members of the committee speak? Questions addressed?Did it appear to be very divisive or was there consensus? You are not required touse any of these examples, but this level of analysis is what is expected in yourpaper.•Provide your thoughts on the portion of the committee meeting you watched. Forexample, is the legislation interesting? Can you think of any reasons why the billyou identified above should (or not) be adopted? What affects do you think thisbill may have? How might this topic be addressed in the future?Video archives for House committees can be found athttps://www.congress.gov/committees/video. Choose a committee that interests you,and a list of videotaped hearings will appear after clicking on the respective link. If youhave a question about the quality of a specific video you would like to write about, thenplease email me and I can confirm whether or not this is a good option for you.Video archives for Senate committees can be found at each individual committees’website. To see a list of committees that will direct you to their website (and thereforetheir hearings archives), visit https://www.senate.gov/committees/index.htm. You willlikely need to click on a “Hearings” tab found somewhere near the top of the page. Again,if you have any trouble finding this, please let me know.All hearings are committee specific, so feel free to choose a committee that focuseson something interesting to you. Make sure that you do not choose a floor session (thatis a different stage of the process), or a short clip of a hearing (a handful of minutes ofvideo).You must include the link to your committee hearing under the titleof your paper.2
Other Important InformationFor your submission, you will need to upload a word/pdf of your assignment to Canvas.You will need to follow standard formatting (12 point font Times New Roman, 1-inchmargins, double-spaced) with a 4 page text limit. Late submissions will be penalized by25% per day that it is late. For your internal citations and referencing, you may use anymajor style you would like, as long as you utilize it appropriately. A typical style in thesocial sciences is Chicago/Harvard, but you may use APA, MLA, etc.This assignment will be graded out of 100 points. There are four major componentsto the assignment; identifying the legislation/topic (20 points), your research on thebill/topic (30 points), describing the hearing (30 points), and providing your thoughts(20 points). Formatting/spelling/grammar is not given its own part of the rubric, butcould reduce your score by 0-20 points depending on how egregious the errors may be.
