Definition
In legislative usage, a snake is a bill introduced before a legislative body that, while framed as a general rule of law, is specifically designed to alter the law with respect to a particular matter then in dispute — to the benefit of the bill's originator or supporters. The general framing is a deliberate disguise: the bill appears to reform law broadly but is engineered to produce a specific outcome in a specific controversy.
The term captures the idea of concealment through form. A snake bill wears the clothes of general legislation while doing the work of special or private legislation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptiles with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues; colloquially, a treacherous or deceitful person.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Any species of the order Ophidia; an ophidian; a serpent, whether harmless or venomous.
The colloquial sense of snake as a treacherous or deceitful person is not incidental here — it supplies the precise metaphor the legal usage intends. A snake bill does not deceive in the way an outright fraud does; it deceives through form, appearing to be one thing while functioning as another. The common meaning illuminates the legal meaning directly, and that relationship is deliberate.
Common Confusion
SNAKE vs. RIDER: Anderson's own cross-reference draws this comparison, and the distinction is worth holding clearly. A rider is an amendment attached to a bill — an addition that may be unrelated to the bill's subject, appended to secure its passage or to bury it. A snake is the bill itself, designed from the outset with a hidden particular purpose beneath a general legislative surface. The deception in a rider is additive; the deception in a snake is architectural.
SNAKE vs. SPECIAL LEGISLATION: Special legislation openly targets a particular person, entity, or circumstance and is generally subject to constitutional restrictions in many jurisdictions. A snake bill is more dangerous to detect precisely because it does not present as special legislation — it presents as general law while functioning as special law. Many constitutional prohibitions on special legislation were designed in part to address this kind of evasion.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears rarely in modern legal sources, and researchers who encounter it in historical legislative debates, committee reports, or legal commentary from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may find no modern counterpart. Anderson's definition is one of the few formal glossings of the term in legal reference literature.
Researchers examining historical legislative history — particularly in the context of challenges to statutes as unconstitutional special legislation — should be alert to the rhetorical accusation that a bill was a "snake." Such accusations in legislative debates or contemporary legal commentary may signal that the legislation's general framing was contested, that affected parties argued the bill targeted a specific dispute or actor, and that constitutional challenges on special legislation grounds may have followed.
The term also appears in the broader history of legislative ethics and reform. Late nineteenth-century reform movements against legislative corruption frequently attacked snake bills as a species of legislative manipulation — the technique of using the machinery of general law to settle private scores or deliver private advantages. Understanding the term in this context is essential for researchers working in Gilded Age legislative history, railroad regulation debates, or early corporate law.
No direct corpus connection to a modern statutory or regulatory equivalent exists. The practice the term describes has not disappeared, but it is now more commonly discussed under doctrines of legislative purpose, pretext, and special legislation analysis.
Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law provides the only formal legal dictionary definition identified in the source corpus. The definition is concise and structurally precise: it identifies the general/particular tension that defines the snake bill and anchors the concept in legislative procedure rather than in statutory interpretation or constitutional doctrine.
What Anderson does not address — and what the historical record suggests was the primary use of the term — is the ethical and constitutional dimension. The snake bill was not merely a procedural curiosity; it was understood by contemporaries as a corruption of the legislative process, a technique for converting public lawmaking into private adjudication. Historical legal dictionaries of the same period that do not include the term (including Black's early editions) are silent on this practice by name, though related doctrines of special legislation and legislative purpose address the same underlying problem.
Researchers should not assume that silence in other dictionaries means the practice was rare. It was common enough to acquire a name.
Jurisdictional Note
The concept of a snake bill is not jurisdiction-specific, but the constitutional remedies available against such legislation vary significantly. Many state constitutions contain explicit prohibitions on special legislation and requirements that legislation be general in application — provisions enacted specifically to foreclose the architectural deception the snake bill represents. Federal constitutional doctrine addresses related concerns through rational basis review and legislative purpose analysis, but does not use this terminology.