User:Kaihsu/DraftD4

Legislation and statutory interpretation.

Module D: Tests for quality of legislation.

Chapter 4: Good Law test.

Good Law: the vision
The Good Law initiative comes from the UK Office of Parliamentary Counsel (OPC). It is a user-based approach to legislating, and has piloted a great number of innovations in legislative drafting. The OPC would like citizens to experience good law – law that is: necessary, clear, coherent, effective, accessible.

The aims of the OPC under Good Law are:
 * to build a shared understanding of the importance of good law
 * to ensure that legislation is as accessible as possible, and consider what more can be done to improve readability
 * to reduce the causes and perception of unnecessary complexity
 * to talk to the judges who authoritatively interpret the law and to the universities that teach it, to avoid confusion and facilitate interpretation.

The Good Law test

 * Content :How much detail? Is this law necessary? Does it duplicate, or conflict with, another law?
 * Language and style :Do we know what the likely readership is? Is the language easy to understand?
 * Architecture of the statute book :What should determine the hierarchy and structure of statute law? What should go into Acts and Regulations?
 * Publication :How will law appear to the online user? What can be done to improve navigation? Should we draft law to be machine-readable?

Why is legislation so complex?
The main causes of the complexity of legislation are:
 * volume
 * quality
 * perception of disproportionate complexity
 * complicated procedures
 * imperfect interactions between the stakeholders involved
 * unpredictability of external factors.

To whom is legislation addressed?
The OPC’s work identified four audience groups for legislation, each with their own concerns, expectations, and priorities:
 * Government (executive)
 * Parliamentarians (legislators)
 * Judiciary
 * Users from the general public (citizens, non-lawyer professional users).