8.5.8 RELEVANT ENACTED LAW
A section that quotes appropriate sections of the relevant enacted law, often labeled “applicable statutes” or the like, can be extremely helpful to a court deciding a dispositive motion.
This section is worth including even if the court has not asked for it. This section should include any constitutional provisions, statutes, regulations, and ordinances (in that order) at issue in the case. The section should include only the enacted laws whose language or application is in controversy. It should not be used to reprint any of these items that you cited in the brief. Rather, you should include statutes or other enacted laws only if you are asking the court to interpret or apply them (or not to apply them) in this case. Label this element according to whatever it happens to contain, e.g., “Applicable Constitutional Provisions” or “Applicable Statutes” or “Applicable Constitutional and Regulatory Provisions,” or the like.If only one paragraph of a lengthy statute is in controversy, you can quote only the pertinent part, but be generous: Do not quote merely the sentence at issue. In general, when excerpting enacted law in a section of this type, you should quote at least a paragraph, and be sure to include introductory material that provides sufficient context (e.g., “Section 125 defines ‘stevedore,’ and provides in pertinent part:...”).
If printing the entire text of the relevant provisions would take up too much space (more than a page), simply include the citations in this section and explain that the full text is reprinted in an appendix.21