[Congressional Bills 105th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2645 Introduced in Senate (IS)]







105th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                S. 2645

To create an official parliamentary station in the United States fully 
        to participate in the Global Legal Information Network.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

             October 20 (legislative day, October 2), 1998

  Mr. Thomas introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
         referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To create an official parliamentary station in the United States fully 
        to participate in the Global Legal Information Network.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Global Legal Information Network 
Participation Act of 1998''.

SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS AND DECLARATIONS OF PURPOSE.

    The Congress makes the following findings and declarations:
            (1) It is the policy of the United States to promote the 
        reasonable, timely and authentic exchange of official legal 
        information between parliaments of nations of the world as 
        originally expressed in the 1886 Convention for the Immediate 
        Exchange of the Official Journals, Parliamentary Annals, and 
        Documents;
            (2) participation by the United States in an international, 
        cooperative, noncommercial legal database contributed to by 
        governments of member nations, the ``Global Legal Information 
        Network'' (GLIN), which would be available over the Internet, 
        contributes to the promotion of security and international 
        understanding through the exchange of legal information and 
        promotes the rule of law, and therefore is in the interests of 
        the United States;
            (3) the timely and accurate availability of laws and 
        regulations of the United States and other legislatures around 
        the world is of the utmost importance to the Congress, both in 
        its own work as well as in the interests of developing and 
        nurturing interparliamentary cooperation; and
            (4) the centralization of the function and control of 
        participation by the United States in such an international 
        legal database will assist in establishing uniformity for the 
        electronic exchange and retrieval of legal information.

SEC. 3. THE UNITED STATES GLIN STATION.

    In order to carry out the purposes of this Act--
            (1) the United States station for the Global Legal 
        Information Network shall be the Law Library of Congress in the 
        Library of Congress; and
            (2) the Director of the United States GLIN station shall be 
        the Law Librarian of Congress.
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