Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:Introduction to Health Care and Public Health in the U.S.
Unit:Regulating Health Care
Lecture:Branches of Government and the Configuration of the U.S. Judicial System
Slide content:Sources of Law Legislative branch makes statutory laws Executive branch makes administrative laws Laws made by the courts are called common law or case law 7
Slide notes:At the most basic level, the legislative branch makes laws by enacting statutes. The executive branch must approve the laws, and after a law passes, it enforces the law. The judicial branch interprets laws. However, there are many exceptions to this general scheme. Many of the laws passed by Congress do not specify every detail of how the law will be implemented. When this happens, the administrative agency responsible for enforcing the law writes regulations, rules, and policies. For example, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly known as HIPAA . However, Congress left many of the details up to the Department of Health and Human Services. The HIPAA Privacy Rule is one example of an administrative law that the Department of Health and Humans Services wrote. Sometimes, a dispute comes before a court that involves a situation for which there is no explicit law or regulation. In these cases, the court must interpret existing law to find situations that are similar to the case at hand. It then formulates a rule to apply to the facts. The rules that courts make in this way are known as case law or common law. 7