Assignment Instructions

Midterm Legislative Critique

There are two significant pieces of legislation that impact maritime security in the United States. These include the Maritime Transportation Security Act 2002 and the S.A.F.E. Port Act of 2006.

For this assignment, you are to conduct a graduate level Legislative Critique of these two pieces of legislation. To do this critique perform the following steps:

1. Obtain a copy of the piece of legislation to be examined. (MTSA and S.A.F.E. Port Act of 2006)

2. Collect and analyze news media reports on the legislation.

3. Collect and analyze any other critiques of the legislation. (i.e. Think tanks, academics, etc)

4. Collect and analyze available witness testimony with regard to the legislation.

To compose a legislative critique students should compose an analysis based upon the following points:

• Provide a brief legislative history of the Bills. (No more that 500 words - USE WORD ECONOMY)!

• Determine if the Bills focus was introduced in the past under a different name and/or format. If so, evaluate why the legislation was discarded.

• Summarize the main points of each bill in your own words (but supported by citation as appropriate)

• Evaluate and categorize the strengths and weaknesses of the individual legislation, then compared against each other.

• Conclude with a final assessment of both pieces of legislation including SPECIFIC recommendations that could be considered to enhance the security framework that has been established. These recommendations need to be as specific as possible JUSTIFY why you believe this should be considered.

The critique will be between 4 pages in length not counting cover sheet and references. Provide 5-8 quality references as support. Submit assignment in APA format.

Compliance with the above directions, quality of your analysis, and the SSGS Assignment Rubric for 500-600 Level Classes will be used to evaluate this assignment.