Graded Homework

Homework Project

Objective: This project is intended to
familiarize you with the basic source materials relevant to government and
commercial contracts. To do this, I am
asking you to find four references and to provide the correct form of
citation for each:

• a federal statute,
• a federal regulation,
• a court decision, and
• a state statute.

Instructions:

1. The real challenge here
   is in absorbing the instructions. A
   key skill for a procurement professional is attention to detail. Following the instructions in the
   assignments in this course will be good practice attending to details. If you use Lexis Uni through Google Scholar,you should be fine. Another good source for
   federal statutes and regulations is gpo.gov/fedsys. Sometimes it works to start with Google
   and then confirm your answer in an official source. (Please
   don’t ever use a Google search result directly as a citation or
   reference.) Your biggest risks
   for making a mistake are:

a.
Providing
a citation for a regulation when a statutory reference is
required. Or a statute, when the request
was for regulation. If you are not
comfortable with the difference, review the materials on the US Legal
System. If that doesn’t clear up any
confusion, ASK.

b.
Providing
a name for regulatory or statutory reference when I’m looking for the citation,
i.e., where to go and find the reference.
In this assignment I’m looking for citations. On the exams, you may be asked either for a
name or a citation. Pay attention to
the difference.

1. For each reference, I
   want the officialcitation. Please
   don’t answer with the internet address where you might find the
   document. For example, for the IRS
   Code (the codified statue as opposed to the Public Law reference, which is
   how Congress actually passes a statute), you’ll need to provide “26 USC
   101,” etc. For the federal
   regulation and the state statute, you’ll need to provide similar
   information.

1. For the
   court decision, you’ll need the
   full citation: the parties (e.g., Roe
   v. Wade), the volume and page number from the applicable court
   reporter, and the year of the decision.The reference should begin with the names of the parties
   (e.g., Smith v. Jones), followed by the reporter reference (e.g., 25 US
   206) and the year of the decision in parentheses. It should look something
   like: Smith v. Jones, 9 US 100, 105
   (1802) I made this up; don’t try
   to look this up thinking it’s a real case. In my made-up answer, the first
   number, 9, is the volume from the reporter. “US” is the abbreviation for
   the reporter, in the example the United States Reports, the official
   reporter of Supreme Court cases. Page
   100 would be the page on which the case starts, but the actual quotation
   is on page 105. I want both page
   numbers.

The Assignment:

Research and find the following four references
or citations:

1. The
   citation for the codified
   (official) federal statute
   that authorizes the Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement
   Policy to promulgate a single, simplified, uniform Federal procurement
   regulation (which we know as the Federal Acquisition Regulation). Federal statutes are either incorporated
   into the United States Code (USC) or listed as Public Laws. I want the USC reference. Watch out for old references; the section numbers were changed in
   2011 when Congress reorganized the procurement laws. Many government contract articles,
   reference books have not been updated with the new sections numbers. In the past, I have been pretty lenient
   on scoring the old sections numbers.
   Title 41 of the US Code where most procurement laws are codified
   was reorganized long enough ago that I expect you to know the current
   sections.

1. The
   citation for the federal regulation
   which prohibits the use by the federal government of a cost plus
   percentage of cost contract.
   Cite the regulation by the title and section number from the Code
   of Federal Regulations (CFR). This
   is not exactly the same as the FAR reference.

1. The
   2008 case citation in
   whichJudge Braden of the Court of Federal Claims granted
   the protester Google a preliminary injunction against a Department of the
   Interior procurement for implementing the Microsoft Exchange system as the
   single email system for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The challenge here is finding the
   citation from the official reporter.
   An internet search will probably turn up the case, but may only
   have the original version published by the court (called a slip
   opinion). I’m asking you to find
   the citation from the Federal Claims official reporter, i.e., Fed. Cl.

1. The
   State of statute – including section
   number – that enacts the UCC Article 2 “Statute of Frauds”
   provision. You’ll need to find the
   version of the Uniform Commercial Code article on sales of goods and
   then find the section which covers the statute of frauds. Figure out what
   is the appropriate citation style for the Annotated Code – it
   should be apparent from your research.
   If you are not familiar yet with the idea of “Statute of Frauds”
   please look it up online or in the Reading List documents. Those sources will give you the generic
   UCC section number, but I want the specific section enacted in in
   the proper format. There is a
   difference. Hint: the section I
   want will not actually use the phrase “statute of frauds.”