Special legislation
type of legislation that affects a specific local area
In the United States, special legislation is legislation that targets an individual or a small, identifiable group for treatment that does not apply to all the members of a given class. The expression "special legislation" is legal term of art. A statute is often called special legislation when it targets a named person, but the term can also be applied to legislation that singles out an association or corporation. Although a prototypical special law applies only to a single particular person or entity, legislation is often considered special when it applies to a small group of people or other entities.
Special legislation can be used to place burdens on or grant benefits to identifiable individuals. During the Confederation Period, bills of attainder, the most well-known type of special legislation, were enacted by state legislatures to punish individuals suspected, but neither charged nor convicted, of a crime. Special legislation was also used during that period to grant benefits to identifiable individuals, including monopoly rights and exemptions from generally applicable laws.
Legislatures still enact special laws that grant special burdens or provide special benefits to individuals; however, the most well-known type of special law, the bill of attainder, has largely disappeared. One recent group of state special laws grants special privileges to Tesla by permitting them to sell electric cars directly to consumers under circumstances that are prohibited to other consumers. Other modern special laws apply to a particular city or county.
The public source identifies “Special legislation” as type of legislation that affects a specific local area. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Special, legislation and type.
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This entry incorporates text from “Special legislation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.