John Cannan, research and instructional services librarian at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law, was awarded the first LexisNexis Research Grant of 2020, receiving $2,730 for a study titled “The New Orthodoxy: How Congress Passes Laws Now.”

LexisNexis Research Grants are awarded twice a year by an American Association of Law Libraries committee to support research that will contribute to the literature in an intellectually significant and original way.

Cannan will collect data on all bills passed by six of the last eight Congresses to determine whether law librarians, researchers and professors should consider changing how they research and teach legislative history. The process by which bills become law in the federal government now includes companion bills over multiple Congresses, complicating the traditional research process.

Kline Law students Marisabel Alonso, Michael Fuentes and Sarah Lee will assist Cannan with the project.

In addition to serving as research and instructional services librarian, Cannan teaches Intellectual Property Legal Research and Legal Writing courses. His article, “A Legislative History of the Affordable Care Act: How Legislative Procedure Shapes Legislative History,” 105 Law Libr. J. 131 (2013) was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in King v. Burwell, 135 S. Ct. 2480 (2015).