Unit 23: English Legal Assignment – Assignment 3
Assignment title: The legislative process and the impact of the European Union on
English law.
Introduction
In this assignment I will be exploring the sources of law which are relevant in providing
legal advice. Discussing also the legislative process, what it is and how this applies to
different situations. Explaining both the rule of Judicial Precedent and Statutory
interpretation. In addition, explaining EU Primary and Secondary Legislation and lastly
evaluating how effective sources of law provide certainty for lawyers giving legal advice.
23/C. P5 Explain the legislative process and how it applies in relation to the task.
The legislative is a process in whereby, a bill which is also a proposed law is passed
through the Parliament. This bill will need to be debated and discussed before it can be
approved by House of Parliament. Once this has happened and the law has passed the
Parliament, it will receive the Royal Assent. In this stage it then becomes the law and it
is now an act. The bills which are brought into the House of Parliament, they can be
introduced by any member. However, the bills which represent a government policy,
they will only be introduced by the ministers and not just any member. The acts are also
called Primary Legislation. The acts which delegate the power to a minister so they can
make the rules and orders, they are instead the Secondary Legislation.
The Primary and Secondary Legislation are both different, the Primary involves the Act of
Parliament whereas the Secondary is involving the Legislation of Byelaw’s. The
government only provides the Delegated Legislation to the people who need create the
laws individually rather than bringing the government into this. The process is lengthy
and this is why it is normal for the individuals to establish a new law and put that into
place. The delegated laws include Statutory Instruments and Orders in Council. It is
important that laws are created immediately especially in times of a crisis where there is
a need for an emergency law to be created. The people creating, they need to have
some knowledge and experience in what they are doing to create a new law.
There needs to be an objective policy which is accepted by the government, this will
then be called the green paper. At this stage, this draft will be for people who hold an
interest in laws and their opinions will be taken into account and the views they have
towards this policy draft. Later this will be called the White Paper, this holds all the
, information and detail about the changing law which is going to be proposed. After this
step is complete, the change of law will instead be called the bill. There are public bills,
private bills and lastly private member bills. All which hold a different meaning, the
public affects everyone and also the country too. The private bills affect a particular
group and the private members bill this is only proposed by an individual who is a
member of the parliament.
When all this is complete, it will be the next part in whereby bills will be taken through
the House of Commons. For this however, there are seven main stages and these are
reading, second reading, committee stage, report stage, third reading, consideration of
the amendments and Royal Assent. The bill is presented to everyone at first and the
next part where people can add their suggestions and there is a debate held. There also
may need to be votes to try and solve the amendments. This leads to a committee who
will look over at the bill, the changes can be made at this stage if needs be. The bill
needs to be presented in front of the House of Commons so changes can happen and
this happens within the report stage. For the third reading stage, the members can get
involved and debate about the bill, give their opinions on what they think about the
specific bill. There is another final step, this needs to be taken to the consideration of
amendments. The legislation will need to be agreed by the original house before it
proceeds any further. Only when this is done and solved, the Monarch must give the
consent to allow the bill to become a new law.
A legislation which came in 1991 was the Dangerous Dog Act. This was introduced so it
could be made a criminal offence for an owner to be in charge of a dog and allow it to
act dangerously or aggressively. If a dog caused harm on a human, the dog would then
be seized. The dog automatically to be destroyed and the owner having to pay a fine as
a result. Under this new law, a few dog breeds were banned such as Pitbull's, Japanese
Tosa and Dogo Argentino. This legislation although it managed to become a new law and
passed as a bill, it resulted in many people raising issues about this. Instead, this
legislation ignored that incidents with dogs happen because of their owner who train
them to be aggressive. It is proven that there is no dog breed who is seen as dangerous,
the difference is only that the banned breed of dogs has a strong muscled jaw compared
to the rest. This legislation only focuses on the genetics and this has not succeeded in
trying to prevent the incidents which happen with dogs and harming humans.
For this reason, in order to have a fair bill being passed. It is better to repeat the process
in the House of Commons, the members to discuss the issues towards the owners and
not only the breed of the dog as that does not justify the dog biting incidents. People
disagree that it is the dog breed that plays a part in why they act dangerously. It is how
they have been trained by the owners. The changes being made would be, to have an
