​Legislation, Regulations and Rule-Making

Terry T. Campo is the author not only of legislation at the state and Federal level in the U.S., but also of laws adopted by foreign governments—including still-Socialist governments moving toward democracy and a market economy.

As General Counsel to Senator Charles Grassley and as a Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, he wrote a number of Bills in the U.S. Congress—including those becoming law—“floor statements” for senior Members of Congress, and Committee Reports to explain Congress’ reasoning for adopting certain legislative language.

As the chief of staff for the 120 lawyers of the U.S. Department of Energy, he personally drafted some of the most sensitive proposals, but oversaw development of all implementing regulations on energy policy—as well as ‘cleared’ all Congressional testimony for the Secretary of Energy and ‘shopped’ responses to interrogatories through OMB for all sub-cabinet officers. This was a natural evolution of his early career, when Mr. Campo had been a policy and press aide to two State Attorneys General and worked in the Illinois legislature—both as a lobbyist and a staffer—before completing law school.

In Administrative Law (“rulemaking”), he has also served as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Practice & Procedure, as a Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and as Counsel to an Administrative Judge at the GSA Board of Contract Appeals before leaving government for the private sector.

Before leaving government service, Mr. Campo served as the General Counsel and Director of Congressional (and Intergovernmental) Affairs for the parent agency that had housed both the Peace Corps and domestic anti-poverty programs administering human services grants in cooperation with state governments. In that capacity, he not only had primary responsibility for ensuring that these state and private grantees complied with Congressional intent and regulatory guidelines, but also was the principal point of contact for the President’s Council on Private Sector Initiatives, headed by the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. His government experience in energy and environment regulation, along with corporate finance, merged when he joined a securities law firm as its Chair of the Legislative and Environmental Department.

Dispatched to the former Soviet Union when it disintegrated, Mr. Campo was one of the first westerners to train its new political leaders in election law and even wrote a manual on election procedures used for Russia’s first free elections. But his background in energy, public policy & corporate finance converged when the U.S. Government engaged him to design and implement foreign assistance programs to restructure and privatize Soviet-era energy industries, phase-out subsidies and improve social safety-nets for their populations. This led to his developing an econometric model that allowed former Soviet Republics to not only provide for their neediest citizens, but also to reduce the new governments’ debt-service costs. Mr. Campo was then asked to draft legal text making this econometric model the law for awarding all social assistance; that law was adopted by the still-Communist-majority Parliament in a former Soviet Republic and replicated by the world bank.

Representative Legislative Work

Terrorism and Domestic Security

Following the imposition of personal liability on federal law enforcement officers by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bivens v. Six Un-Named Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Mr. Campo negotiated changes in the Federal Tort Claims Act with the FBI, DEA, ACLU and Ranking Judiciary Committee-Democrat Senator Joseph Biden (D-DL) to provide indemnification against Constitutional Torts to law enforcement officers acting in good faith reliance on existing law.

Labor Law and the Hobbs Act

When Mr. Campo joined the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley had been the prime-sponsor of legislation to reverse a U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the Hobbs Act—effectively allowing the use of property destruction and threats of violence in labor disputes as a ‘bargaining tool’ because the statute used the word “wrongful” as a predicate in the Federal definition of extortion. Tens of millions of dollars of electrical transformers and other property had been destroyed in a strike against Gulf States’ Utilities. Mr. Campo re-tooled the way the “union violence” issue was presented to de-emphasize the labor-management context, and highlight recent strike-related violence against ordinary workers who had been injured—including how organized crime had been allowed to cloak their extortion by taking-over labor unions. A series of full-Senate Judiciary Committee hearings drove home this point, and enlisted the FBI and the President’s Commission on Organized Crime’s endorsement. This strategy allowed the legislation, long-stalled in subcommittee, to pass all the way to the Floor of the U.S. Senate where only a filibuster prevented its final passage.

CERCLA Reauthorization

Mr. Campo obtained support of the Senate’s Ranking-Democratic Judiciary Committee Member Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Finance Committee Chair Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) for referring to the jurisdiction of Judiciary Committee, and to Grassley’s Subcommittee on Administrative Practice, reauthorization of certain titles of CERCLA—the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Clean-Up and Liability Act (a.k.a. “Superfund”)—based upon changes in Federal Rules for assessing joint and several liability for cleanup activities. This effectively prevented early reauthorization and ‘sober reflection’ of its implications.

Patent Policy

Participated in drafting of legislative language creating a National Security Exception to Public Law 98-620, mandating the development of uniform policy allowing government-owned but contractor-operated (GOCOs) facilities to elect to retain ownership of federally-funded inventions they produce.

Statutes & Regulations Authored by Terry T. Campo

• Federal Criminal Code; 18 U.S.C. 1844(I) (1984), provision of the federal criminal code: providing enhanced penalties, including the death penalty, for the crime of arson when a public safety officer is injured or killed as a direct or proximate result of the underlying arson. (Drafted while Counsel to the U.S. Senator Judiciary Committee and negotiated with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). Mr. Campo is cited in, John Panneton, “Federalizing Fires: The Evolving Federal Response to Arson Related Crimes,” in AMERICAN CRIMINAL LAW REVIEW, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Fall 1985) American Bar Association, Section on Criminal Justice and Georgetown University Law Center, pp. 151-206, FN 477, at 193.
• Illinois Public Health Code: Ill. Admin. Code, tit. 77 Sect. 695.10, et seq. (1996), provision of the Illinois Department of Public Health’s Immunization Code, revising the existing immunization protocols and adding immunization against the Hepatitis-B virus, as a requirement for admission to child care facilities, early childhood programs, and/or 5th grade of the public and private schools of Illinois. (Drafted on behalf of client, SmithKline Beecham, and negotiated with the Illinois Department of Public Health and healthcare interests.)

Congressional Oversight & Legislative Intent

Congress usually must hold hearings on major proposals before legislation or even funding is brought to a vote. This sometimes takes years—if not decades, to achieve. But sometimes, long-stalled issues can be ignited by events, and the opportunity to drive legislation is presented. Having your "legal ducks-in-a-row" and proposed legislation already drafted to be “dropped in the Hopper” allows you to seize the opportunity.

Rather than wait years to change a statute, letters from key Members of Congress expressing their views of how an agency should interpret words and phrases in legislation or Committee Reports, or even inquiring into the agency’s administration of a law or program, can signal to the agency there will be substantial “Oversight” over its different interpretation.

This requires having not only the technical expertise, but also an existing relationship with Congressional leaders. Terry T. Campo has known every House GOP Leader since Gerald Ford and Senate GOP Leader since Howard Baker, and now works closely with Congressional Leadership in both chambers—and both parties.

Building a Legislative History

The Legislative History of any bill—including Report language—influences the courts and regulatory agencies in interpreting Congressional Intent. Successful legislation will be implemented only after regulations have been promulgated under the “Notice and Comment” process of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). Those regulations will then guide government agencies both in enforcement actions (including state agencies which receive Federal funds or conform their regulations to its standards) as well as in establishing internal guidelines that influence the awarding contracts and grants. All of those actions are then subjected to lawsuits and administrative challenges based on claims that they deviated from the APA process or constitute an abuse of the discretion. Congressional Oversight Hearings will follow, and the agency’s funding for enforcement or implementation may be limited through the Appropriations Process.

In fact, the Congress elected in 2014 can be expected to aggressively use a “Resolution of Disapproval” for many new regulations under the ‘two-House veto’ authority of the Congressional Review Act enacted after the one-house “Legislative Veto” authority was struck-down in INS v. Chada. This may also constitute ‘evidence’ of the Congressional Intent when a Rule is challenged in Court.

But the Congress responds to public opinion and is primarily driven by political considerations. An effective legal strategy must also take those factors into account.

Administrative Law and Agency Rule-Making

Most people conflate Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) and trial judges—like a trial court judge, the ALJ is the ‘trier of facts.’ But when it comes to the laws and regulations before them, the ALJ applies the law in a manner consistent with their employing agency’s interpretation. When an appeal is taken from that decision to the Circuit Courts, the ALJ’s—and the enforcement agency’s—interpretation is generally accorded the deference similar to an independent, Article III Court. This means the outcome of your case may have been effectively determined according to the way the agency interpreted Legislative Intent when it promulgated its internal Rules and Guidelines for its implementation.

As General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, Terry Campo oversaw legislation to make ALJs independent of their parent agencies—and even Chaired the hearings, when the prime sponsor, a former Chief Justice of his state’s Supreme Court but from the minority party, asked him to Chair in the absence of Senator Grassley.

When major a pharmaceutical manufacturer retained us to have a school code changed to include immunization for a particular virus, they envisioned a two-year lobbying effort. The Law Offices of Terry T. Campo ‘diagnosed’ the issue, consulted with regulators and obtained the endorsement of key health sector actors; then, presented not only that political support but also a cost-benefit analysis to the Governor, who directed state agencies to adopt the regulatory change less than one year after taking-on the project.