Law Reform – Influences upon Parliament
There are many influences operating on parliament before and during the legislative process. Explain and evaluate any three of these influences, giving examples of how parliament has been persuaded to introduce legislation.
Law reform means making a change to the law by improving what had existed before. Law reform can be achieved by updating the law, codification of the law and consolidation of statutes. There are many different influences upon parliament for law reform. Three of these influences are Law commissions, Royal commissions and pressure groups.
The law commission is the independent body established by the Law Commission Act 1965 to keep the law of England and Wales under review and recommend reforms when they are needed. The law commission is important because it is the only full-time publicly funded body established for the purpose of law reform. The law commission consists of five commissioners plus support staff. The chairman is a high court judge who is appointed for a term of three years. The other four commissioners are solicitors, barristers or teachers of law. Each of them is appointed by the Lord Chancellor for a term of five years and may serve two terms. The law commission is an advisory body which makes proposals for law reform but they also work on consolidation of statutes and statute law revision. The law commission may select a range of projects after consulting with bodies such as the bar, the law society and academic lawyers and then produce a programme of projects. A new programme is produced every four to five years. The law commission decides what to put into its programme by considering the importance of the issues, availability of resources and the suitability of the issue. Teams of lawyers and research assistants each headed by a law commissioner consider the reforms needed. Areas of law are researched and a consultation paper is published with proposals for reform. Anyone interested can respond and if a change to the law is proposed a draft bill is added to the report and put before parliament for it to be passed as law. Examples of legislation that were created following a report of the law commission are: The Computer Misuse Act 1990, Unfair Contact Terms act 1977, Criminal Attempts Act 1981, Occupiers’ Liability Act 1984, Law Reform (year and a day rule) Act 1996.

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A good essay. Again, this student makes reference to case examples without explanation. Simply citing a case will not develop an explanation or argument. The student fails to evaluate pressure groups in any substantial way; if she/he had, the mark would have been higher. Other examples this student could have chosen include think tanks and private members' bills. 3 Stars