Draft Legislation Research Articles

Book Review: Introduction to Legislative Drafting and the Drafting Process

Book Review: Introduction to Legislative Drafting and the Drafting Process

Use of Supporting Documents: Cost-Benefit Analysis in Legislative Drafting

Use of Supporting Documents: Cost-Benefit Analysis in Legislative Drafting

Good Governance in Pakistan Through Effective Laws: A Case Study of Legislative Drafting and Law Reform Processes in Pakistan

Good Governance in Pakistan Through Effective Laws: A Case Study of Legislative Drafting and Law Reform Processes in Pakistan

Legislative Drafting: The Consumer Protection Act

Legislative Drafting: The Consumer Protection Act

Second International Conference on Legislative Drafting and Law Reform

Second International Conference on Legislative Drafting and Law Reform

Legislative Drafting in Transitional States: The case of Palestine

Legislative Drafting in Transitional States: The case of Palestine

Legislative Drafting Challenges in Communications Regulation: Convergence, Globalisation and New Media Culture

Legislative Drafting Challenges in Communications Regulation: Convergence, Globalisation and New Media Culture

Legislative Drafting Without Borders

Legislative Drafting Without Borders

Legislative Drafting and Law-Making Practices and Procedures under Saudi Arabian Law: A Brief Overview

Legislative Drafting and Law-Making Practices and Procedures under Saudi Arabian Law: A Brief Overview

The Process of Legislative Drafting in a Civil Law Jurisdiction: A Case Study of Brazil

The Process of Legislative Drafting in a Civil Law Jurisdiction: A Case Study of Brazil

Aligning Greece’s Regulatory Governance With International Transformative Principles and Objectives: The Case of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Abstract The article highlights the importance that the international dimension of the regulatory context of draft legislation acquires for the drafting of effective regulation. It attempts to demonstrate the added value that the integrated incorporation of fundamental regulatory principles and objectives derived from influential global regulatory texts enjoying full acceptance, like the UN Resolution on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, brings to a country’s regulatory governance. From an empirical perspective, the article focuses on a thorough analysis of the degree to which Greece’s law-making process is interconnected and aligned with core regulatory principles of the 2030 Agenda, such as the principle of policy coherence, the evidence-based principle, and the principle of inclusion. It examines the key instruments, procedures, and ways in which these principles are appropriately mainstreamed into the Greek legislative process and the institutional and policy framework of the Government on which its legislative interventions are founded. As a case study, the alignment and coherence of the provisions of a specific law pertaining to tourism development with the overarching regulatory principles of the UN 2030 Agenda are examined. Τhe concluding part presents some proposals that could contribute to improving the way the SDGs are effectively mainstreamed into Greece’s legislative process.

A Linguistic Insight into Legislative Drafting. Tradition and Change in the UK Legislation

A Linguistic Insight into Legislative Drafting. Tradition and Change in the UK Legislation

How can we translate research papers into legislative drafts? A methodological framework of the Translational Legal Approach to Knowledge Utilisation

ABSTRACT One important factor in knowledge utilisation in policy is adapting research papers to better fit policy-makers’ needs. Translating research papers from a variety of genres and types, books to journal articles, into legislative drafts can be understood as a form of adaptation. This was named as the Translational Legal Approach to Knowledge Utilisation (TLA). This article addresses the methodological need to construct a framework for TLA. It proposes a methodological framework which includes definitions, translation heuristic, guiding problems, stages and translation procedures, various translation modes (legislative techniques with different levels of specificity) and various translation forms (legislative genres with different legal status, functions, and other characteristics). By looking at cases from Polish and EU laws and standards, this article proposes a methodology for researchers to better align their research conclusions and recommendations to policy-makers’ needs.

The EU as Active and Passive Political Determinant of Forced Migrants’ Health: Insights from the Case of Germany

Context: This article examines the EU's function as a political determinant of health (PDoH) in national-level regulation of forced migrants’ access to health(care), with a focus on Germany. It sheds light on the role the EU has come to play—and has been assigned—in national policy making under the impact of different crises. Methods: By applying the concepts of claims and frames/framing, the article examines in a document analysis how and to what end(s) the EU as a polity and specific EU legislation were invoked in German draft legislation. Findings: Increasing Europeanization in the areas of health and migration has not only forced national legislators to adapt legislation to abide by EU rules and standards, it has also prompted governmental actors to shift responsibility for policy reforms to the EU—even in cases where not all of these reforms were legally required. Conclusions: The EU's role as a PDoH must be considered from two angles: the EU's active potential to determine public health through its policies and laws, and its passive—to some extent involuntary—potential to do so through the strategic invoking of EU norms, rules, and (in)competences by actors across the EU multilevel governance system.

New Provisions for Police Officers in BNSS

On July 1, 2024, three historic criminal laws—the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhinayam (BSA)—replaced three antiquated statutes from the British colonial era in India. The new laws aim to improve India's criminal justice system and offer a more effective framework for dealing with criminal activity. The main points of the BNS, which aims to replace the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which was created a century ago, will be covered in this article. The BNS worsens the retributive system by introducing wide and imprecisely defined offenses, upholding crimes with roots in outmoded moral principles, and continuing the growth of state and police authority. It is argued that the main goal of the legislation's drafting appears to be to provide the impression that colonial legacies—that is, obsolete colonial laws—have been abandoned, all the while advancing a nationalist agenda meant to instill a sense of patriotism in the general populace.

From pen to algorithm: optimizing legislation for the future with artificial intelligence

AbstractThis research poses the question of whether it is possible to optimize modern legislative drafting by integrating LLM-based systems into the lawmaking process to address the pervasive challenge of misinformation and disinformation in the age of AI. While misinformation is not a novel phenomenon, with the proliferation of social media and AI, disseminating false or misleading information has become a pressing societal concern, undermining democratic processes, public trust, and social cohesion. AI can be used to proliferate disinformation and misinformation through fake news and deepfakes; can AI also be used for beneficial purposes to develop the antidote legislation combatting these challenges? Leveraging the capabilities of LLMS, such as ChatGPT and others, can present a promising direction for optimizing legislative drafting. By proposing the methodological approach of an AI bun, this article explores an important approach in which LLMS can support lawmakers and policy experts in crafting legislation. The article contributes to the discourse through a nuanced understanding of the opportunities and challenges in harnessing LLM-powered tools for legislative innovation. Ultimately, it underscores the transformative potential of LLMs as a potential resource for lawmakers seeking to navigate decision-making while developing legislation on an example of navigating the intricate landscape of misinformation and disinformation regulation in the age of AI.

Legislative drafting techniques as a means of giving effect to the rule of law. The case of Ukraine

Ukraine is currently carrying out some reforms recommended by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and by the European Commission (in order to become a Member State of the European Union), in order to strengthen democracy, the Rule of Law, human rights and protection of minorities. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that legislative drafting techniques are a means to give effect to the principle of the Rule of Law, when it comes to Ukraine; and to recommend that Ukraine improves the way its institutions draft/scrutinise bills, and adopts best practices from Europe. The methods of this article will be those of an analysis of constitutional law. The article will rely on the definition of the principle of the Rule of Law (given by A.V. Dicey and developed by Lord Bingham) and the idea that legislative drafting techniques can be seen as a means to give effect to such a principle. The Ukrainian current constitutional context (viz., the impossibility of amending its Constitution under martial law, due to Article 157 of the Constitution of Ukraine) will be considered. Some pieces of Ukrainian legislation will be analysed in the light of the Venice Commission’s recommendations. Some of the main legislative drafting techniques and their aims, in the light of the best practices from Europe, will also be analysed. The results of the article will set out that in such a current constitutional context, where the recommended reforms can be implemented only by Acts of Parliament (although some amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution would be appropriate), in Ukraine the quality of primary legislation becomes crucial to give effect to the Rule of Law. Therefore, the scientific novelty of the article will be to test general concepts with regards to the exceptional constitutional circumstances of Ukraine. The conclusions, thus, is that Ukrainian institutions (such as the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the President of the Republic of Ukraine) should improve the way they draft/scrutinise bills, adopting best practices from Europe, in order to improve the quality of primary legislation and, thus, to give effect to the principle of the Rule of Law.

The Legislative Drafting of Sources of Judicial Ruling in the Jordanian Personal Status Law No. 15 of 2019

The Legislative Drafting of Sources of Judicial Ruling in the Jordanian Personal Status Law No. 15 of 2019

Proposed guiding standards for the drafting of Arab archival legislation

Archival Legislation represents an essential element in the broader legislative base of any effective independent government, it’s provides the necessary legal framework for the flow of documents in all state agencies and regulates their path, and defines the duties and responsibilities of the government, agencies and institutions in their dealings with current, semi-current and permanent documents, and codifies the right to access those documents, and ways to benefit from them, and explains the controls and standards for legal protection of archives in general and its materials in particular, and spreads awareness of the legal dimensions related to the practice of the archival profession, which limits abuses and violations, and leads to providing the highest level of service. Therefore, suggestive Guidelines came because of studying the archival legislation of nine Arab countries and comparing them together. These are matched by relevant global guidelines.

Consulting citizens: Addressing the deficits in participatory democracy

‘Democracy’ is a pliable, and much abused concept, yet constitutional law cannot do without it. It is usually linked to the equally flexible notions of rule of law and constitutionalism. Due to many changes in public life around the world, entrenched ideas of governmental propriety, including being democratic, are undergoing a ‘loss of meaning’. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 explicitly requires democracy to be participatory. Despite various official efforts to formulate the modalities of public consultation and an established routine of public hearings and calls for comment on draft legislation and policies, it has not developed beyond a ‘box-ticking’ exercise, sometimes amounting to outright abuse. As a corrective to the shortcomings of standard electoral democracy a novel approach to the involvement of the citizenry in contentious decision-making has emerged in many parts of the democratic world. It takes the form of citizens’ assemblies composed to achieve descriptive representation rooted in an age-old method of randomised selection, known as ‘sortition’. To employ these mechanisms to realise genuine participatory democracy would require surmounting the difficulties presented by the complexity of South African society. Modern technology and advances in sortition methodology hold promises of overcoming the difficulties, but it would also require a political sea change.