Examining the Utility of Fish and Kroenig's Legislative Powers Survey in Assessing the Effectiveness of Nigeria's National Assembly

Abstract

Modern political and legal theory agrees that there are three branches of government: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. The legislature is the representative branch saddled with the responsibility of making law, the executive implements or executes the law while the judiciary serves as arbiter to interpret and declare what the law is whenever there is a dispute. The delineation of these functions in a state is done through the instrumentality of law or legislation. The importance of the existence of separate branches of government is the provision of checks and balance to stop the excesses of each of the branches. Given the importance of law in a society, the legislature occupies a prime position among state institutions. In his exposition of the primacy of the legislature, Locke wrote that the branch where the power of legislation resides typifies the sovereignty of the state. 1 Taking this point further from a modern perspective, Nwabueze notes that legislation ‘is the expression of the supreme power in the state, the distinctive mark of a country’s sovereignty, and the index of its status as an independent state. Thus, the sovereign power in a state is identified in the organ that has the power to make laws by legislation. The legislature is therefore the sovereign organ of state power’.