Legislation

9 Key excerpts on "Legislation"

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  Law and Society

  An Introduction

  • John Harrison Watts, Cliff Roberson(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 Legislative Lawmaking The word Legislation is derived from the Latin words meaning “law” and “bringing.” Originally, the word had more of a religious connotation, in that an act of Legislation was an act of a high priest revealing a divine law. Today, we understand Legislation to mean a set of social rules that a majority of leg-islators have declared to be enforceable laws. It is universally understood that any legislative body maintains as its primary function the business of lawmaking. The chief function of the U.S. Congress, for example, is lawmaking. Moreover, it has been suggested that Congress should carry out that function so that laws are responsive to the views and needs of a majority and should do so in a way that allows the full range of significant views to be heard. 2 The idea of representation is also a powerful concept with regard to law-making. As representatives, lawmakers seek to address the needs of their 167 Lawmaking as a Form of Social Control constituents through the legislative process. Many of the ideas of these con-stituents find their way into the legislature. Sometimes, appearances are made by average citizens, lobbyists, and in some cases, celebrities such as sports figures and famous actors, who testify about specific legislative needs. Likewise, it is not unusual for a legislator to receive a steady stream of mail from citizens who have a vested interest in a particular piece of Legislation. This is especially true with the ease of which electronic mail (email) is sent. Whether proponent or opponent, they constitute the legislator’s many and diverse “clientele.” Moreover, since reelection to office is so closely tied to taking care of constituents, citizen demands are often translated into legisla-tion, especially those that affect groups of people rather than just one indi-vidual. Consider the following excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s Representative Government , which addresses the legislative duty of representation.

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  Foundations of Law

  Cases, Commentary and Ethics

  • Ransford Pyle, Carol Bast(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Although the states differ in the extent to which they have codification May refer to the simple process of turning a custom or common law rule into Legislation but usually refers to the making of a code, that is, a set of written rules. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Sources of the Law: Legislation 93 codified state law, every state has enacted a complex body of statutes that serves as a principal source of law. The rise of the power of legislatures is reflected in the courts, which now defer to the statutes. Nevertheless, because disputes over the law must ultimately be resolved in the courts, the meaning of Legislation is decided by the courts and applied to specific cases. THE NATURE OF Legislation In Chapter 3, Legislation was distinguished from judge-made law by its characteristics of “universal application and future effect.” The line drawn between the characteristics of legisla-tion and adjudication has not always been clear. In the past, legislatures often passed special bills to define narrow rights of individuals or local entities, but this practice has always been viewed with suspicion (see the 1851 case of Ponder v. Graham ). When a legislative body nar-rows its focus to resolve a particularized dispute, its actions may be challenged in court as violating the principle of separation of judicial and legislative powers embodied in federal and state constitutions.

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  Law in Politics, Politics in Law

  • David Feldman(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  5 Legislation and Politics STEPHEN LAWS O NE OF THE situations where the worlds of law and politics invariably collide is in the process of changing the law with Legislation. Legislation – as a process rather than as the product from that process – is essentially a political activity. Politics and the democratic legitimacy they provide are both the motive and the justification for legislating. The majority of Legislation passed in the UK Parliament is for the purpose of facilitating the implementation of the Government’s policies, and to enable it to carry out its political programme. Legislation forms a major part of the day-to-day work of practis-ing politicians in government and in Parliament. The product of a political process neces-sarily retains political features deriving from its origins. I THE POLITICAL ORIGINS OF Legislation Each year the Government has a programme of Legislation for passage during the Parliamentary Session; and top of the priorities for inclusion in that programme are Bills to implement the governing party’s election manifesto – or, under the current coalition gov-ernment, the commitments in its coalition agreement. Time in Parliament for Legislation is strictly rationed by practicalities imposed by Parliamentary practice and procedure, and by the calendar. Very rarely, if at all, do governments find that they have enough legislative time for everything that they would like to do. Governments want to make the most effi-cient use of the opportunity they have earned by success at the ballot box to determine the priorities for legislative change. The inevitable consequence is the allocation of the highest priority to Legislation that is needed for implementing the policies supported by the strong-est political case. Parliament’s role includes being the main forum for the country’s political debate.

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  The Legislative Process in Great Britain

  • S. A. Walkland(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Legislation as a Process

  The end-products of Legislation are easily recognized. They are Acts of Parliament as published in the Statutes Revised, and the contents of the collected annual volumes of Statutory Instruments.

  Difficulties arise, however, when a conceptual definition of Legislation is attempted—to try to show how, in substance, Legislation differs from other broad governmental processes such as administration and adjudication. Attempts at a rigid classification along conceptual lines break down at the margins, and the conclusion cannot be avoided that the main differences between the ways in which determinations of public questions are made in any governmental system are largely procedural, and do not relate to any general inherent functional differences between the main activities of public authorities.

  A conceptual definition of Legislation which is often attempted states that it consists, to quote one authority, ‘of the making of determinations which are issued to indicated but unnamed and unspecified persons or situations’.1 Here the important characteristic of Legislation is regarded as being that of generality of application. Another definition, substantially similar, and attempting to distinguish between Legislation and the work of the courts, suggests that Legislation normally ‘affects the rights of individuals in the abstract and must be applied in a further proceeding before the legal position of an individual will be touched by it, whilst adjudication operates concretely upon individuals in their individual capacity’.2 The Donoughmore-Scott Report on Ministers’ Powers in 1932 similarly held that ‘the power to issue a particular command’ was ‘in no sense legislative’.3 Other attempts at defining a legislative function rely on the fact that Legislation characteristically looks to the future, whilst judicial enquiries investigate present or past facts.

  1 K. C. Davis, Administrative Law

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  Legislating for Wales

  • Thomas Glyn Watkin, Daniel Greenberg(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • University of Wales Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1

  Legislation and Legislatures

  Legislation: THE WORD AND ITS MEANING

  The English word Legislation is derived from two Latin words: legis from lex meaning ‘an enacted law’, and latio meaning ‘a bringing forward’ or ‘a proposing’. The phrase legis latio was the technical expression used in ancient Rome to describe the proposing of a law or the bringing forward of a legislative proposal.      1-01

  The meaning, or rather meanings, of the word Legislation in modern English are not far removed from the word’s etymological roots in Latin. Modern English dictionaries ascribe two meanings to the word. Collins English Dictionary gives these as:      1-02

  the act or process of making laws; enactment; and, the laws so made;

  while the Oxford English Dictionary ’s entry is similar:

  the action of making or giving laws; the enactment of laws; law giving; the enactment of a legislator or legislature; the whole body of enacted laws. In both cases, the first of the meanings describes a process – the process of making laws, while the second meaning describes the end-product of that process – the law or laws so made.

  IMPLICATIONS OF THESE MEANINGS

  The meanings of the word Legislation therefore imply certain things about Legislation as a concept. It is implied that Legislation in the sense of an enacted law is the end-product of Legislation in the sense of a process of enacting, and – from the etymology of the word – that the process of enacting is the result of some person or some body having brought forward or proposed that an enacted law be made by that process. The word may be said to carry those implications. The implications are, as it were, the ‘baggage’ which the word carries.      1-03

  These implications give rise to questions. If Legislation in the sense of enacted law is the result of a process of enactment, who may enact such laws, and what is the process by which such enactment is achieved? If the process results from someone or somebody bringing forward or proposing that a law be made by the process, who may bring forward such a proposal? How is such a proposal to be brought forward? How is it to be decided whether to enact the proposal in the form in which or with the content with which it is brought forward? Where and when can such proposals be brought forward, and where and when can they be enacted? Can any proposal be brought forward and enacted or are there topics which are not susceptible to such initiatives; in other words, what can be proposed and enacted? From where does the authority to bring forward such proposals come? From where does the authority to enact such proposals derive? Why are such proposals brought forward and why are they enacted? These are all questions which arise from a consideration of the meaning and root of the word, but they lead to an analysis of the concept of Legislation itself.      1-04

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  Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1

  Rules and Order

  • F. A. Hayek(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  SIX THESIS: THE LAW OF Legislation The judge addresses himself to standards of consistency, equivalence, predictability, the legislator to fair shares, social utility and equitable distribution. Paul A. Freund * Legislation originates from the necessity of establishing rules of organization While in political theory the making of law has traditionally been represented as the chief function of legislative bodies, their origin and main concern had little to do with the law in the narrow sense in which we have considered it in the last chapter. This is especially true of the Mother of Parliaments: the English legislature arose in a country where longer than elsewhere the rules of just conduct, the common law, were supposed to exist independently of political authority. As late as the seventeenth century, it could still be questioned whether parliament could make law inconsistent with the common law. 1 The chief concern of what we call legislatures has always been the control and regulation of government, 2 that is the direction of an organization—and of an organization only one of whose aims was to see that the rules of just conduct were obeyed. As we have seen, rules of just conduct did not need to be deliberately made, though men gradually learned to improve or change them deliberately. Government, by contrast, is a deliberate contrivance which, however, beyond its simplest and most primitive forms, also cannot be conducted exclusively by ad hoc commands of the ruler. As the organization which a ruler builds up to preserve peace and to keep out external enemies, and gradually to provide an increasing number of other services, becomes more and more distinct from the more comprehensive society comprising all the private activities of the citizens, it will require distinct rules of its own which determine its structure, aims, and functions

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  English Legal System

  • Ryan Murphy, Frances Burton(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It is important to remember this when assessing the impact of particular pieces of Legislation that have a constitutional flavour. It is no longer sufficient to view each piece of Legislation in isolation and it is important not only to think of whether it is of a constitutional nature itself but also whether it will conflict with earlier Acts or principles of a constitutional nature. This task of identifying ‘constitutional’ Acts of Parliament is complicated by the fact that they will, until labelled as such by a court, appear to be a regular Act of Parliament. So-called constitutional Acts will follow exactly the same procedure as any other Act of Parliament in their passage through the legislative process.

  Conclusion

  The law-making process, as it applies to primary Legislation, is complex and highly politically charged. However, it is crucial for those wishing to understand the English Legal System to appreciate fully the importance of every step of the process that leads to primary Legislation. Without understanding the context of how an Act of Parliament came into force it can be difficult to understand how it was intended to apply and how it will be received by both the courts and the wider public.

  Moreover, and beyond the mere mechanics of the law-making process, with its many steps and procedures, it is important to note some of the broader themes that arise out of the discussion in this chapter. First, the process tells us something about the involvement (or lack thereof ) of citizens in that process. At present, the role of participatory democracy in the English Legal System is somewhat limited. Citizens elect their MPs (who are only part of the legislature) and thereafter the role of the individual member of the public is largely over until the next General Election, some five years hence. The English Legal System has informal channels through which the individual may influence law-making, such as exerting pressure on the Government to introduce specific policies. Increasingly, there are also more formal channels for recognising the role of the citizen in the process

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  Legisprudence

  A New Theoretical Approach to Legislation

  • Luc Wintgens(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  The legislator, by definition relies on extra-legal data, which, according to his policy insights, are translated into rules. Whatever the differences might be between the judge’s and legislator’s freedom in relation to their reliance on extra-legal data, there exists a certain freedom for both of them. Long gone now is the time that Legislation was considered an art . When this term is used to describe legislative activity, I believe more things are concealed than explained. Indeed, the qualification of Legislation as an art depicts it as a kind of mysterious activity carried on by wise and benevolent men who know Legislation as Legal Theory: Legisprudence 29 best the needs of a community, nation or state. Such a qualification best fits with strong legalism, together with the concept of sovereignty. In such a conception of law-making, the fact that law is related to choices or decisions is not denied, it is simply hidden. 66 Nothing serves this idea better than the qualification of leg-islation as an art. Artistic activity is in itself not rational . This does not, how-ever, exclude that there exist some valuable theoretical explanations of art, but the artistic act in itself, has, as I believe, like political action, no ultimate ratio-nal ground. Artistic creation has its own dynamics, that can be theoretically articulated, but as in Legislation these articulations cannot take the place of artistic creation itself, since it is theory and not art . When legislative activity is qualified as ‘rational’, this means that it deals with the cognitive aspect of the rules to be followed by the legislator or, more pre-cisely, with the cognitive aspect of the internal point of view of the legislator. Rationality in Legislation, then, means that the legislator does more than pro-mulgating, in the form of legal rules, his own subjective preferences.

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  Introduction to Law

  • Beth Walston-Dunham(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  After reading this chapter, you should be able to: • Describe the method of election of members to both houses of Congress. • Describe the three purposes of Legislation. • Describe the process of Legislation. • Discuss the effect of the presidential veto power on Legislation. • Discuss the publication process of new Legislation. • Describe the role of the lobbyist. • Describe the role of the judiciary with respect to statutory law. CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Legislation C H A P T E R 3 CHAPTER OUTLINE THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH THE PURPOSE OF Legislation THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS The Path from Concept to Law Constitutional Amendments The Function of Lobbyists Public Hearings and Sessions Publication of Legislation Legislation AND JUDICIAL REVIEW THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH A primary source of U.S. law is Legislation enacted by the federal legislative branch known as Congress. (Because the legislative process at the state level is generally similar to the federal process, this chapter focuses on Legislation by the U.S. Congress.) Although the judicial and executive branches make significant contributions to law in the U.S. legal system, often they are responding to actions already taken by the legislature. A primary responsibility of the judicial branch is to interpret and apply the laws. According to the Constitution, the executive branch has the gen -eral task to faithfully execute the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. The authority of Congress is stated with specificity in Article I of the Constitution. Congress has the power to raise, through taxation, revenues that are used to support governmental functions. Congress also has the authority to determine the manner in which these revenues are to be spent. Congress has the author -ity to raise and support armies and to declare and support wars. Another major power of Congress—and the subject of much Legislation—is the authority to regulate commerce.

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