Supply Chain Project 1

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.”