Legal Studies (LGST) 555

Overview

In Legal Studies 555: Legislative Structure and Preliminary and Final Provisions, students will apply their developing drafting skills in more complex tasks. This course will focus on the structure and organization of legislative texts and provisions that appear at the beginning or end of a legislative text to perform mainly technical functions. Most of these do not contain substantive rules of law. But they play important functions in establishing the authenticity of the legislation, in supporting its operation and use and in ensuring that new legislation is compatible with existing legislation.

Outline

LGST 555 consists of 10 Sections, organized into two Modules:

Module 1: Getting Organized

Section 1: How should we structure a legislative text?

1. General considerations
2. Drafting sections
3. Drafting sentences in sections
4. Paragraphing
5. Numbering
6. Arranging and linking sentences in a section
7. Linking sections
8. Incorporation by reference
9. Grouping sections

Section 2: How should we organize a legislative text?

1. General considerations
2. Preparing an outline
3. Factors influencing an outline for a Bill

Module 2: Drafting Preliminary and Final Provisions

Section 1: What are preliminary and final provisions and what other explanatory material may be included?

1. Preliminary and final provisions
2. Explanatory material

Section 2: How do we draft titles, preambles and words of enactment?

1. Long titles of Bills
2. Preambles
3. Word of enactment
4. Short titles

Section 3: How do we draft commencement and durations provisions?

1. Commencement provisions
2. Expiry provisions

Section 4: How do we draft interpretation provisions?

1. General considerations
2. Definitions generally
3. Labelling definitions
4. Stipulating definitions
5. Syntax of definitions
6. Interpretive rules
7. Hints and checks

Section 5: When and how do we draft purpose clauses?

1. What is a purpose (or objects) clause?
2. Why use a purpose clause?
3. Why do legislative counsel not use purpose clauses more often?
4. When is a purpose clause useful?
5. How should a purpose clause be drafted?

Section 6: When and how do we draft application provisions?

1. Application provisions generally
2. Application to things in the past
3. Provisions binding the State
4. Extra-territorial application

Section 7: When and how do we draft saving and other transitional provisions?

1. General considerations
2. Legal effects of appeals
3. The content of saving and other transitional provisions
4. Drafting saving and other transitional provisions

Section 8: When and how do we draft schedules?

1. What are schedules to legislative texts?
2. When should schedules be used?
3. How should schedules be drafted?

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

1. Prepare a legislative outline which organizes legislative sentences in a logical structure.
2. Draft preliminary and final provisions appropriate to their jurisdiction.
3. Draft definitions, interpretation and application provisions.
4. Draft transitional provisions.

Evaluation

To receive credit for LGST 551, you must complete and submit all of the assignments and achieve a minimum grade of C− (60 percent) for the course.

You will be evaluated according to the principles of legislative drafting, including style, research, background / context and grammar / mechanics. Your final grade in the course will be based on the marks achieved for the following activities.

Activity	Weight
Drafting Project 1	25%
Drafting Project 2 (Part 1: 10% , Part 2: 15%)	25%
Drafting Project 3	15%
Drafting Project 4	35%
Total	100%

$extra

Materials

All materials are available online.

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