2016 Ros Davies Memorial Research Travel Award

Fieldwork Report by Ilaria Di Gioia

Thanks to the generosity of Prof. Philip Davies —who funded the Ros Davies Memorial Travel Award— I had the opportunity to travel to a snowy Denver, CO between 5-11 February 2016 and visit the headquarters of the National Conference of State Legislature (NCSL). The main purpose of my trip was to complete the data collection for my PhD dissertation in American Constitutional Law.

My PhD research investigates the aversion of some American state legislatures to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In particular, my dissertation consists of an analysis of the constitutional arguments used by the state legislators upon the introduction of bills that oppose the implementation of specific provisions of the ACA within the territory of the state.

This type of legislative research requires the use of legal databases such as West Law and Nexis Lexis. However, these databases are limited to statute search and do not allow the user to track the history of a certain bill, the introduced version and the debate before the enactment. A more appropriate database for this purpose is State Net, an American legal database unavailable in any UK institution.

I had the opportunity to use State Net during my research trip to Denver, thanks to the kindness of Richard Cauchi, Health Program Director at NCSL, who dedicated two full working days to my project. With the help of Director Cauchi, I identified the most appropriate search strategies and conducted a targeted search that allowed me to examine a good amount of new data and refine my old database. It was particularly useful to collect state sovereignty bills filed in January 2016 that will need to be tracked over the rest of the legislative year.

The visit to NCSL allowed me to make exceptional progresses with my research and I have been lucky to meet talented researchers that provided valuable insights into legislative search strategies. I am still in contact with the researchers at NCSL and we constantly share information and updates on the status of states’ legislation in healthcare.

Overall, the research trip to Denver, CO has enormously contributed to the depth of my legislative research and to the credibility of my PhD dissertation. I shall update this report once my PhD dissertation has been examined.