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In a post earlier today (link), I laid out why I didn’t think the General Assembly was likely to return for anything other than dealing with the Racial Justice Act veto this week.

Here’s the caveat, an outline if you will, of how the honorables might be able to come back.

Gerry Cohen, the legislature's head of bill drafting, points out that the constitution says lawmakers “may only consider such bills as were returned by the Governor … .”

It doesn’t say anything about “resolutions,” the legal mechanism by which session adjournments are governed. Resolutions are not signed by the governor or adopted into statute law.

Cohen points out that in 2007, the adjournment resolution ending the session that was reconvened to override a veto tweaked the adjournment resolution from that summer. And in 1981, Cohen said, lawmakers returned for a special session called by the governor but used their adjournment resolution to help reopen the main session from that summer.

So there’s precedent, set by Democrats, for mucking about with adjournment resolutions during special and reconvened sessions.

So if you were to follow that precedent as far as it would take you, then one could conclude that Republicans could tweak the standing adjournment resolution to call a special legislative session for Wednesday, Jan. 4. They’d essentially be adding another session to the calendar that would, as it stands now, bring them back next on Feb. 16.

Now, Cohen isn’t about to divulge what advice he gave to legislative leaders. And he said there was the possibility that if the General Assembly went down that road, someone could raise a legal quibble.

It seems to me the more practical problem may be garnering the votes necessary to do any other veto overrides. If the House Republicans don’t yet have the votes to override the Racial Justice veto, then there’s not a lot to make me think they have the votes to do any of the other veto overrides.

But in the interest of full disclosure, and noting some legislative arcana, there you go.