§ 7.00    Organizing and Arranging: Introduction

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The most basic rule for organization is that you should have one. A draft that is not organized is likely to be a disaster. Having an organization helps both the drafter and the reader: It helps you order your thoughts, and it helps the reader navigate and understand the draft.

Your draft should always be well-organized. You should keep the organization of the whole draft in mind when drafting the parts.

In federal law, the principal unit of organization is the section. Each section should be numbered, and each section should cover a single topic only. This is not only good sense--it is the law. Section 104 of title 1, United States Code, provides: "Each section shall be numbered, and shall contain, as nearly as may be, a single proposition of enactment."

Using a numbering system makes a law easier to use and easier to read. Referring to a section by number is clearer and more precise than referring to it by description. A section that has a number is easier to find. Laws with numbered sections are easier to navigate.

Covering one topic per section also makes a law easier to use and read. A section in drafting should work much like a paragraph in prose: It focuses the reader's attention on a single idea, fleshes out that idea, then yields to the next idea. One topic per section is simple and intuitive. One topic at a time makes a law easier for a drafter to organize and makes each topic easier for a reader to grasp.

These ideas--number each unit; one topic per unit--are so powerful and effective that they are used not only for sections, but also for smaller units within a section and "big levels" (titles, chapters, and so on) into which sections are grouped.

But these ideas tell you only what the characteristics of the principal units of your draft should be; they do not tell you how to organize and arrange those units in an effective way. To organize and arrange a bill--or a part of a bill-- there are three types of problems: problems of sequence, problems of division, and problems of grouping. Handling these problems is the focus of the rest of this chapter.

When organizing and arranging, the most general principle is this: Put each provision where it can most easily be found. A reader who knows about it should be able to find it easily, and a reader who doesn't know about it should be able to stumble across it easily. The rest of this chapter discusses how to apply this general principle to your draft.