It operates on projects referred to it by the Lord Chancellor or government department, at times it may also work on projects itself feels necessary for consideration.
Normally a project will begin with a study of the area of law in question and attempt to identify its defects. Foreign legal systems may be looked at to see how they deal with similar issues. Then it publishes a consultation paper inviting comments, it describes present law and sets out possible options for reform. The commission’s final recommendations are in a report containing a draft bill where legislation is proposed. The government then decides if it accepts the recommendations of the law commission. If it does it is down to them to introduce any necessary bills in parliament.
Personally I think the law commission was weak in some areas and stronger in others. For example they didn’t do very well with codification, although they were set a list of laws to codify attempts for the first few were abandoned and the last one never even begun. It is thought that the reason for this is that they realized it wasn’t going to work and it didn’t fit in with law making in our country. Zander suggests it was down to ‘a
mixture of conservatism and realisation on part of the draftsman, legislators and even judges that it simply didn’t fit the English style of lawmaking’.
Although they did better with contract law, they have radically changed it by recommending control of exclusion clauses which led to the unfair contract terms act 1977, they helped in many other situations as well.
A pressure group is an organized group that seeks to influence government policy or legislation. Although the term ‘pressure groups’ implies they use force not all of them do, different groups have different methods. Their aim is to influence people who have the power to make decisions. Some choose to lobby MP’s gaining as much publicity as possible for their cause; others may organize petitions or encourage people to write to their own MP and/or minister. Some groups tend to be more effective than others, size or persistence may be the reason for some group’s success. Examples include JUSTICE a group concerned with promoting law reform in general and charities such as help the aged and shelter.
As well as pressure groups and other organizations the public generally make their opinions known to MP’s, ministers and to newspapers. This can lead to reform; another thing that has a great impact on reform is the media as it claims to reflect what the public think in general.
Although much law reform happens as a response to pressure from one or more sources agencies such as the law commission are set up to deal with area of law referred to them by the government.
The majority of law reform is carried out by parliament and is done in four ways. The first one is repeal, then creation, consolidation and finally codification.
