{"id":18745,"date":"2026-06-11T12:20:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18745"},"modified":"2026-05-28T00:34:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:34:58","slug":"acronyms-as-titles-for-us-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2026\/06\/11\/acronyms-as-titles-for-us-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Acronyms as titles for US laws"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>On Reddit in 2023, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AskHistorians\/comments\/12mvqum\/the_us_has_a_habit_of_giving_its_laws_convoluted\/\">someone asked<\/a>: \u201cThe US has a habit of giving its laws convoluted names because they make nice acronyms (eg the Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, which spells out PATRIOT). When did this first start and why?\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p>Responses include a bunch of discussion. Respondents cite a couple of older examples, such as the \u201cAct for International Development or \u2018AID Act\u2019 of 1950\u201d and the \u201cWorker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act or \u2018WARN Act\u2019 of 1988.\u201d But most of the discussion suggests that this approach to naming laws became popular in the late 1990s.<\/p>\r\n<p>See also:<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li><a href=\"https:\/\/noahveltman.com\/acronyms\/\">Congressional acronym abuse, 1973-2013<\/a>, by Noah Veltman.<\/li>\r\n  <li><a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1113026\">A Statute by Any Other (Non-Acronomial) Name Might Smell Less Like S.P.A.M.<\/a>, by Chris Sagers (1998)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-acronyms","category-laws"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18745"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18748,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18745\/revisions\/18748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}