Enrollment of Legislation: Relevant Congressional Procedures

Enrollment of Legislation:
Relevant Congressional Procedures
May 7, 2008
Valerie Heitshusen
Analyst on the Congress and Legislative Process
Government and Finance Division

Enrollment of Legislation:
Relevant Congressional Procedures
Summary
An enrolled bill or resolution is the form of a measure finally agreed to by both
chambers of Congress. Enrollment occurs in the chamber where the measure
originated and is carried out by enrolling clerks under the supervision of the Clerk
of the House of Representatives and Secretary of the Senate. Enrolled bills and joint
resolutions are signed by the presiding officers of each chamber (or their designees)
and are presented to the President by the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate,
depending on the chamber of origination.
In instances in which Congress determines that the enrolled measure does not
reflect congressional intent, it can require that changes be made by adopting a
concurrent resolution directing the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate to do so.
If the enrolled measure has already been presented to the President — but not yet
enacted — the concurrent resolution can request its return to allow specified
corrections to be made.
If Congress wishes to alter an enacted measure, new legislation must be enacted
to do so. In rare instances, the constitutionality of certain measures has been
challenged based on allegations that the enrolled (and therefore, enacted) text did not
accurately reflect congressional action. In considering these cases, the federal courts
have typically relied on precedent to refuse review of the enrollment process (or other
pre-enactment congressional procedures).
This report will be updated as circumstances warrant.

Contents
Introduction ......................................................1
Definitions and Personnel...........................................1
History of the Enrollment Process.....................................3
Changes in Enrollment..............................................4
Issues Arising after Enactment........................................6

Enrollment of Legislation:
Relevant Congressional Procedures
Introduction
An enrolled bill or resolution is the form of a measure finally agreed to by both
chambers of Congress. Enrollment occurs in the chamber where the measure
originated and is carried out by enrolling clerks under the supervision of the Clerk
of the House of Representatives and Secretary of the Senate. Enrolled bills and joint
resolutions are signed by the presiding officers of each chamber (or their designees)
and are presented to the President by the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate,
depending on the chamber of origination.
In instances in which Congress determines that the enrolled measure does not
reflect congressional intent, it can require that changes be made by adopting a
concurrent resolution directing the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate to do so.
If the enrolled measure has already been presented to the President — but not yet
enacted — the concurrent resolution can request its return to allow specified
corrections to be made.
If Congress wishes to alter an enacted measure, new legislation must be enacted
to do so. In rare instances, the constitutionality of certain measures has been
challenged based on allegations that the enrolled (and therefore, enacted) text did not
accurately reflect congressional action. In considering these cases, the federal courts
have typically relied on precedent to refuse review of the enrollment process (or other
pre-enactment congressional procedures).
Definitions and Personnel
An enrolled bill or resolution is the form of a measure finally agreed to by both
chambers, which is printed on parchment or paper.¹ Enrollment occurs in the
chamber in which the measure originated. First, the Speaker of the House, and then

¹ An enrolled measure should be distinguished from an engrossed measure; the latter is the
version of a bill (or resolution) in the form passed by the chamber of origin or of the
amendments adopted to it in the chamber acting second. Once prepared and authenticated
(as evidenced by the signature of either the Clerk of the House or the Secretary of the
Senate, as appropriate), the engrossed measure is messaged to the other chamber to await
action there.

the Senate’s presiding officer,² must sign each enrolled bill to confirm that the text
reflects that which was passed by the House and Senate, respectively.³
Enrollment is carried out by House and Senate enrolling clerks, who are,
respectively, overseen by the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate.⁴
These offices are responsible for enrolling the bill in accordance with congressional
action. The signature of either the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate is required
on the reverse of the back page, to indicate in which chamber the measure
originated.⁵ Once it is signed by the Speaker of the House and then the President of
the Senate — or their designees — an enrolled bill or joint resolution is presented to
the President by the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate, depending on the
chamber in which the measure originated.⁶ While the U.S. Constitution provides the
President 10 days (excluding Sundays) to act on a measure once it has been presented
to him, there is no explicit limit (in the Constitution or either chamber’s rules) on the
time taken for the enrollment process.⁷

² In the absence of the President of the Senate (the Vice President of the United States), the
President pro tempore is the presiding officer and executes the duties of that office (Senate
Rule I, paragraph 1).
³ Section 106 of Title 1 of the United States Code requires the signature of each chamber’s
presiding officer on each enrolled bill. Since 1981, the Speaker of the House is authorized
to sign enrolled bills at any time, whether the House be in session or not (House Rule I,
clause 4). A Speaker pro tempore elected by the House may also signed enrolled bills
(Asher C. Hinds, Hinds’ Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States,
(Washington: GPO, 1907-1908), II § 1401), and the Speaker may designate a Member to act
in only this capacity for a limited time, subject to House approval (House Rule I, clause
8(b)(2)). Senate Rule 1, paragraph 3, permits the signing of enrolled bills for a limited time
by another Senator appointed (by the President pro tempore in open session or in writing)
to act as Acting President pro tempore; the Senate may also by unanimous consent authorize
a Senator other than the President pro tempore (or his designee) to sign enrolled bills during
a specific time period. In addition, the rules allow the Senate to authorize, by unanimous
consent, the presiding officer (or his or her designee) to perform these duties during recesses
or adjournments. For example, see Congressional Record (daily edition), vol. 153, (January
4, 2007), p. S8, when the Senate grants, by unanimous consent, a request that the President
of the Senate, the President pro tempore, and the Acting President pro tempore be authorized^th
to sign enrolled measures when the Senate is in recess or adjournment during the 110
Congress.
⁴ House Rule II, clause 2(d)(2), provides the House Clerk responsibility for overseeing the
enrollment process in that chamber, and Senate Rule XIV, paragraph 5, gives the Secretary
of the Senate express authority over the Senate’s enrollment process.
⁵ House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House, by Wm.
Holmes Brown and Charles W. Johnson (Washington: GPO, 2003), p. 762; How Our Laws
are Made, H.Doc. 108-93, revised and updated by Charles W. Johnson, (Washington: GPO,

2003), p. 50.

⁶ Floyd M. Riddick and Alan S. Frumin, Riddick’s Senate Procedure, 101^st Cong., 2^nd sess.,
S. Doc. 101-28 (Washington: GPO, 1992), p. 830; House Practice, pp. 762, 765.
⁷ House Rule II, clause 2 (d)(2), requires the House Clerk, after the presiding officers have
signed a House-originated enrolled measure, to “forthwith present” it to the President.
Similarly, Senate Rule XVI, paragraph 5, requires the Secretary of the Senate to “forthwith
(continued...)

History of the Enrollment Process
The enrollment process dates to the first years of Congress, with procedures to
ensure its integrity initially laid out in Jefferson’s Manual:
When a bill has passed both Houses of Congress, the House last acting on it
notifies its passage to the other, and delivers the bill to the Joint Committee on
Enrollment, who sees that it is truly enrolled in parchment. When the bill is
enrolled it is not to be written in paragraphs, but solidly, and all of a piece, that
the blanks between the paragraphs may not give room to forgery (9 Grey, 143).
It is then put into the hands of the Clerk of the House of Representatives to have
it signed by the Speaker. The Clerk then brings it by way of message to the
Senate to be signed by their President. The Secretary of the Senate returns it to
the Committee of Enrollment, who presents it to the President of the United⁸
States.
From 1789 to 1876, the House and Senate had joint rules with similar
requirements in relation to enrollment. In particular, these rules directed the House
Clerk and Secretary of the Senate to enroll bills and mandated a review (and any
corrections, if necessary) by a joint committee, which would then report to the
respective chambers.⁹ The joint rules lapsed in 1876, but these practices were largely¹⁰
continued until the passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946.
The 1946 Reorganization Act provided that responsibilities pertaining to
enrollment were now to be delegated to the newly-established Committee on House^th
Administration, which retained these authorities until the beginning of the 107
Congress, when they were transferred to the House Clerk and laid out in House Rule

⁷ (...continued)
present” to the President any Senate-originated enrolled measure once it is signed by each
chamber’s presiding officer. In some instances, enrolled measures pending at the end of a
congressional session have been sent to and approved by the President in the next session^th
of the same Congress. In addition, at the beginning of the 98 Congress, measures enrolled^th
in the 97 Congress were presented to and signed by the President (U.S. Congress, House,
Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives of the States,^nd
One Hundred Tenth Congress, H.Doc. 109-157, 109th Cong., 2 sess., [compiled by] John
V. Sullivan, Parliamentarian (Washington: GPO, 2007), § 577).
⁸ House Manual, § 573, 575.
⁹ IV Hinds’ Precedents, § 3430.
¹⁰ 60 Stat. 826 (August 2, 1946). After the joint rules lapsed in 1876, House rules still
referred to a Joint Committee on Enrolled Bills, and the Senate adopted “resolutions
empowering the committees on Enrolled Bills, Printing, and Library to act in conjunction
with the similar committees of the House” (IV Hinds’ Precedents, § 4416). In addition,
Cannon notes that “while the rule provides for a joint committee, in practice each branch
acts separately in the comparison of bills of its own House for enrollment and merely
cooperates in the interchange of bills for signature” (U.S. Library of Congress,
Congressional Research Service. Engrossed and Enrolled Bills in the House of
Representatives, Archived CRS typed report, November 1, 1977, by Stanley I. Bach, pp. 8-9;
Clarence Cannon, Cannon’s Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United
States. (Washington: GPO, 1935) VII § 2099).

II, clause 2(d)(2).¹¹ The Senate transferred authority over the enrollment process to
the Secretary of the Senate in 1945 upon adoption of S.Res. 64 (79^th Congress);¹² this
responsibility is now incorporated in Senate Rule XIV, paragraph 5.
Changes in Enrollment
Enrollment of a measure must accurately reflect congressional action; virtually
no changes may be made by the offices of the House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate¹³
without an order of the Congress to do so. If, in enrollment of a measure, it
becomes apparent that congressional action did not accurately reflect congressional
intent on the measure — or if there was a clerical error that resulted in the two
chambers agreeing to different text (or, if after printing, an error is discovered¹⁴) —
both chambers must agree to a concurrent resolution that directs the appropriate
official to re-enroll the bill with specified changes.¹⁵ If the enrolled bill has been
signed by the presiding officers, the resolution rescinds their signatures and the
measure must be signed anew after the enrollment has been corrected.¹⁶ If the
measure has already been presented to the President, the concurrent resolution must
also request the President to return the bill to the chamber of origin.¹⁷ The correction
is made by the officer (House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate) of the chamber in

¹¹ House Manual, § 727, p. 452.
¹² Lewis Deschler, Deschler’s Precedents of the United States House of Representatives.
(Washington: GPO, 1977) ch. 24 § 14.4.
¹³ House precedent states that “(t)he enrolling clerks should make no change, however
unimportant, in the text of a bill to which the House has agreed” (III Hinds’ Precedents, §

2598).

¹⁴ The House Clerk or Secretary of the Senate can order the printing of a “star print” to
correct Government Printing Office (GPO) printing errors in engrossment, but after both
chambers have acted on a measure, a concurrent resolution is necessary to correct printing
errors (House Practice, p. 761; V Hinds’ Precedents § 7319).
¹⁵ Concurrent resolutions have been used to correct enrollments even when they involve only
errors in spelling or the title. For example, in the 109^th Congress, the adoption of
H.Con.Res. 502 directed that the word “point” be changed to “pound” in the enrollment of^th
H.R. 5682, and in the 108 Congress, the spelling of a House sponsor’s name was corrected
in the enrollment of S. 2238, pursuant to H.Con.Res. 458. Concurrent resolutions directing
changes in enrollment may, however, also involve substantive changes (see House Practice,
p. 763). In addition, on at least one occasion, Congress used a concurrent resolution to
direct the House Clerk to “correct chapter, title, and section numbers” in the enrollment of^nd
any general appropriations bills enacted during the remainder of the 82 Congress
(Deschler’s Precedents, Ch. 24 § 14.5). In the most-recently completed Congress — the
109^th — Congress agreed to 14 such concurrent resolutions directing changes in enrollment
(according to a search of the Legislative Information System for all adopted concurrent
resolutions with the word “enrollment” in the title).
¹⁶ Riddick’s Senate Procedure, pp. 824, 828-829. House Practice, p. 764.
¹⁷ House Practice, p. 764; Riddick’s Senate Procedure, pp. 824, 446-447. While the
measure is typically resubmitted to the President, further action could instead be postponed
indefinitely. (See Deschler’s Precedents Ch. 24 § 16.5.)

which the measure originated, but the concurrent resolution directing that officer to
make the specified changes can originate in either chamber.¹⁸ In addition, a
concurrent resolution for this purpose can be agreed to by one chamber even before
the measure in question has passed either chamber.¹⁹
In the House, a concurrent resolution directing changes in enrollment is not
privileged and, while typically considered by unanimous consent, may also be taken
up according to the provisions of a special rule or under suspension of the rules.²⁰
In the Senate, a House concurrent resolution to make changes is privileged, though
if the change is substantive, it has been held that unanimous consent is required for
its consideration; a Senate concurrent resolution to make changes is privileged in the
Senate only if the changes are technical in nature.²¹ A Senate concurrent resolution
making substantive changes would not be privileged and, if any Senator objected to
its consideration, would need to be referred to committee or go over under the rule.²²
Senate precedents specify that concurrent resolutions used for correcting enrollment
are subject to amendment, but not of a legislative or general nature, except by
unanimous consent.²³
A concurrent resolution directing changes in enrollment is often agreed to by
unanimous consent in the House, but the House may agree to it by voice or recorded
vote when it is considered under suspension of the rules or under the provisions of
a special rule reported by the Rules Committee.²⁴ In the Senate, the concurrent
resolution is typically agreed to by unanimous consent, and Senate practice dictates
that if the changes are substantive, they may only be agreed to by unanimous
consent.²⁵

¹⁸ House Practice, p. 763. In the 109^th Congress, for example, a Senate measure (S.Con.Res.
123) directed the House Clerk to correct a House measure (H.R. 5946). Similarly, a House
measure (H.Con.Res. 324) directed the Secretary of the Senate to correct a Senate measure
(S. 1281).
¹⁹ House Practice, p. 763. For an example in which the resolution was agreed to before the
measure it corrected was, see S.Con.Res. 74 in the 109^th Congress, which corrected the
enrollment of H.R. 2863 (an emergency supplemental appropriations bill) before either
chamber agreed to the conference report.
²⁰ House Practice, p. 764. In the case of a concurrent resolution requesting return from the
President of a measure not yet enacted or vetoed, the House has typically considered the
resolution by unanimous consent (ibid).
²¹ Riddick’s Senate Procedure, p. 826.
²² Ibid.
²³ Riddick’s Senate Procedure, p. 825.
²⁴ House Practice, p. 764. In recent examples of the House agreeing to such a resolution by
a recorded vote, the vote occurred on a so-called “self-executing” special rule, in which the
recorded vote agreeing to the rule itself also had the effect of granting House approval to the
concurrent resolution referenced therein.
²⁵ Riddick’s Senate Procedure, p. 825. For an example of one such concurrent resolution
agreed to in the Senate by a recorded vote, see S.Con.Res. 74 in the 109^th Congress, which
directed changes in enrollment to H.R. 2863.

Issues Arising after Enactment
Once an enrolled bill becomes law, any changes — to correct either an error in
enrollment or other alteration of the measure between congressional passage and
enactment — must be made in a new enactment. In this case, Congress could pass
new legislation for the purposes of making “technical corrections” to a law that did
not accurately reflect congressional action or intent due to clerical errors or other
changes made during the enrollment process.
In some instances, it has been alleged that irregularities in enrollment resulted
in the enactment of a measure not in the form agreed to by both chambers. If
Congress does not address the problem with a subsequent new enactment, the
constitutionality of the measure may be challenged in federal court. The disposition
of these cases may hinge on a variety of factors (including, for example, whether or
not the party challenging the law has standing to do so). When the courts have
addressed such issues in the past, they have frequently relied on a 1892 Supreme
Court ruling, announced in Marshall Field & Co. v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, called the
enrolled bill rule. This rule provides that the courts do not “look behind” the
enrollment process (i.e., examine other legislative documents and records) to
determine if Congress properly enrolled the text of a measure as passed, so long as
each chamber’s presiding officer signed the enrolled bill, thereby attesting that it
accurately reflected final congressional action. If a court were to rely on the enrolled
bill rule in its refusal to review the pre-enactment process, it would presumably
permit the law to stand. If, however, a court agreed that the constitutional
requirements for enactment were not fulfilled, the court could invalidate the entire
text or alternatively, strike down only the portion of the law that is alleged to have
been incorrectly or improperly enrolled.
One recent instance was S. 1932 in the 109^th Congress, the Deficit Reduction
Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-171), for which the enacted text did not reflect the text agreed
to by both chambers. In the final stages of consideration of S. 1932, the engrossment
of a Senate amendment to the House amendment contained an inadvertent error that
did not accurately reflect Senate action because the Senate had taken no action to
alter the House amendment in this way. The House subsequently agreed to the
Senate-engrossed text without correcting the error; thus, both chambers had agreed
to identical text that did not reflect either chamber’s intent. Before sending the
measure to the President, the text that was agreed to (in error) was changed to reflect
what each chamber apparently intended, although neither chamber adopted a
concurrent resolution to authorize this change to the text in question.²⁶ Several
parties have challenged the constitutionality of the law on these grounds in federal
court; to date, no court has invalidated the law or any portion of it, and those
decisions issued thus far have relied, at least in part, on the enrolled bill rule to reject
the claims of unconstitutionality. In one case in which appeals were filed, the United

²⁶ After the President signed the legislation, the Senate by unanimous consent took up and
agreed to S.Con.Res. 80 (109^th), which specified that the enacted measure be “deemed the
true enrollment of the bill reflecting the intent of the Congress,” but the House did not
consider the resolution.

States Supreme Court denied the petition to review the circuit court’s dismissal of the
case.²⁷

²⁷ CRS Report RS22507, Constitutionality of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005: Litigation,
by Thomas J. Nicola, discusses the current status of the pending court cases in more detail.
Additional detail on the legislative history of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is provided
in archived CRS Report RL33132, Budget Reconciliation Legislation in 2005-2006 Under
the FY2006 Budget Resolution, August 17, 2007, by Robert Keith.