AB 2339 amends Section 100 of the California Government Code by rephrasing the clause that locates sovereignty in the people and by placing the existing procedural style language into a separate subsection. The bill’s text introduces a parenthetical rewording and explicitly sets the style of process as "The People of the State of California," while preserving the existing rule that prosecutions proceed in the people’s name and by their authority.
On its face the change is housekeeping: the Legislative Counsel describes it as nonsubstantive. Still, even purely editorial edits to foundational text can matter for drafters, statutory citations, and any future amendments that target a specific subsection or phrase.
This bill mostly affects legal drafting, statutory publishers, and court and agency forms rather than creating new policy obligations.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill revises Government Code §100 by splitting the provision into subsections and slightly rewording the sovereignty clause while explicitly codifying the traditional style for writs and prosecutions as "The People of the State of California." It does not create new rights or duties beyond the existing language.
Who It Affects
Primary effects fall on legislative drafters, court clerks, statutory publishers, and legal services that maintain form language and citations; practitioners who cite §100 may need to note the new subsectioning. Ordinary Californians and criminal defendants see no substantive legal change.
Why It Matters
Even cosmetic edits to foundational constitutional-style language can produce downstream effects: citation shifts, potential ambiguity if wording is altered unintentionally, and new targets for future amendments. Compliance officers and publishers should watch for updated citation formats and database indexing.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
AB 2339 touches a short but symbolically important provision: Government Code §100, which declares that the state’s sovereignty resides in the people and prescribes the caption and authority under which writs and prosecutions run. The bill rewrites that provision in two short subsections.
The first restates the sovereignty sentence with a slightly altered phrasing; the second sets out the style of process as "The People of the State of California" and reiterates that prosecutions proceed in the people’s name and by their authority.
The Legislature’s digest flags the change as nonsubstantive, which indicates an intent to correct wording or organization without altering legal effect. Practically, the bill functions as a drafting cleanup: it gives each idea—sovereignty and process style—its own labeled subsection, which makes future amendments easier to target and reduces the risk of drafting errors when subsequent bills change one element but not the other.That reorganization is why this matters administratively even if it does not change legal rights.
Law reporters, statutory databases, court forms, and internal agency templates commonly hard-code exact phrases and section references; a change in punctuation, capitalization, or subsectioning can require widespread updates. The bill minimizes policy disruption but creates a small operational task list for anyone who publishes or relies on the precise text and citation of §100.Finally, because §100 sits at the front of the Government Code and expresses a long-standing constitutional-style principle, even clerical edits can attract attention from litigants or commentators who read for nuance.
The Legislative Counsel’s nonsubstantive label reduces that risk, but it does not eliminate the possibility that a future litigant or amendment will treat the new wording or new subsection labels as meaningful.
The Five Things You Need to Know
AB 2339 amends Government Code §100 by inserting subsection labels and rephrasing the existing text rather than introducing new policy.
The bill places the sovereignty sentence into subsection (a) and adds subsection (b) to state the style of process and the rule for prosecutions.
Subsection (b) codifies the caption for process as "The People of the State of California" and retains the phrase that prosecutions are conducted "in their name and by their authority.", Legislative Counsel characterizes the amendment as nonsubstantive, indicating an intent to correct or reorganize wording without changing legal effect.
Although labeled technical, the amendment will require updates to statutory publishers, court forms, and any materials that cite or reproduce §100 verbatim.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Sovereignty sentence reworded and isolated
The bill isolates the sovereignty declaration into subsection (a) with slightly altered wording. That change is drafting-focused: separating the sovereignty clause makes it a discrete target for citation or future amendment and clarifies the statute’s internal structure for readers and codifiers.
Formal style for process and prosecutions restated
Subsection (b) explicitly sets the style of process as "The People of the State of California" and repeats that prosecutions proceed in their name and by their authority. Functionally this preserves existing practice while giving the captioning rule its own subsection, which simplifies references in procedural rules, forms, and administrative templates.
Nonsubstantive drafting cleanup
The Legislature’s digest and the bill’s format indicate this is an editorial or technical amendment. The practical implication is limited to drafting, publication, and administrative maintenance: databases, statute books, and form repositories must reconcile the new subsection labels and any minor textual differences when they update the code.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Government across all five countries.
Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Legislative drafters and future bill authors — splitting the text into subsections makes it easier to amend or reference one idea (sovereignty vs. process style) without risking accidental changes to the other.
- Court clerks and form designers — having the process caption codified in its own subsection reduces ambiguity about the exact phrasing to use on writs and charging documents.
- Statutory publishers and legal database managers — clearer subsectioning improves indexing and searchability, reducing the chance of mis-citations in secondary sources.
Who Bears the Cost
- Publishers, database vendors, and law libraries — they must update the text, cross-references, pagination, and citation metadata for §100 in print and electronic systems.
- Court administrative offices and public agencies — minor operational work to update templates, headers, and filing software where §100’s exact phrasing is embedded.
- Litigants and counsel in rare cases — risk that parties will litigate the import of the new wording or subsection labels, creating legal costs even if the change is nominal.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill balances two legitimate aims: the technical clarity and maintainability of statutory text versus the risk that even technical edits to a foundational provision will be read as meaningful or create citation and operational friction—so the question is whether the benefits of cleaner drafting justify the dispersed, practical costs and the small risk of interpretive disputes.
At first glance AB 2339 is a housekeeping measure. The central implementation task is administrative: align published texts, update automated citation links, and revise any templates that reproduce §100 verbatim.
Those are modest costs but distributed across many stakeholders, so they can be nontrivial in aggregate.
A deeper tension arises from drafting practice itself. Short, emblematic provisions like §100 have symbolic weight; changing punctuation, phrasing, or structure—however small—can invite interpretive attention.
If the new wording differs in nuance (for example, in word order or punctuation), a litigant could argue that the amendment reflects a changed understanding of the provision. The Legislative Counsel’s nonsubstantive label reduces that risk legally, but it does not eliminate the potential for confusion or for future amendments to pick up the new subsection labels as anchors for substantive change.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.