League Principles

The League Principles are ‘concepts of government’ to which the League subscribes. These concepts are a direct descendant of the Platform, which served the League from 1942 to 1956 as the national repository for “principles supported and positions taken by the League as a whole in fields of government to which it has given sustained attention.” The Platform has disappeared from the League vocabulary but the principles survived as “The Principles.” Since that time, the Principles have served two functions according to the LWVUS Bylaws:

  1. authorization for adoption of national, state, and local program; and
  2. as a basis for taking action at the national, state and local levels.

The Principles

The national board suggests that any action on the Principles be taken in conjunction with present League positions to which they apply and on which member agreement and understanding are known to exist. The Principles are rather broad when standing alone, so it is necessary to exercise a certain degree of caution when considering using them as a basis for action. Furthermore, since 1974 most of the Principles have been an integral part of the national program, most notably in the criteria for evaluating government action that appear at the end of the formal listing of public policy positions in Impact on Issues.

-- From the LWVUS publication In League.

Impact on Issues can be downloaded from the LWVUS web site; type "Impact on Issues" into the search field. In League can be accessed in the same way but only by members. Members may access the members-only area of the web site by following the instructions that begin at https://member.lwv.org/PreRegister.asp.

(Hint: To download large documents such as Impact on Issues or In League without opening them first, in most browsers, you can right-click the link and then select "save target as...". Then you can read or print the document at your leisure off line.)