Authentic interpretation of laws is an interpretation of legal provisions that, due to their lack of clarity or misinterpretation in their application, is provided by the parliament. Unlike the ...legislative procedure, which is conducted, as a rule, in two (exceptionally three) readings, a proposal for giving an authentic interpretation is discussed in one reading. Starting from the understandings of some authors that the act of authentic interpretation of laws is contrary to the principle of democratic pluralism, and that it lacks the necessary level of democratic control and citizen participation, the author examines whether the Croatian parliamentary law enables public participation in the procedure for authentic interpretation of laws and, if so, what legal instruments can be used to implement it in parliamentary practice. To this end, the paper analyzes several relevant constitutional, legal, and procedural provisions of the Croatian parliamentary law, with reference to a parliamentary practice. Given the fact that the procedure for authentic interpretation in the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of Northern Macedonia, the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Serbia is regulated in a similar way by the rules of procedure of their respective parliaments, the relevant regulations of the latter three countries on the possibility of public participation in this procedure are analyzed as well. It was concluded that Croatian parliamentary law enables public participation in the procedure for authentic interpretation, through the instruments of petition, information and involvement in working groups and working bodies, and the same instruments, with certain specifics, are recognized in the parliamentary law of the latter three countries.
The implementation of a strategy that could be described as “erosion”, but also the defence, liberalisation and decriminalisation of abortion rights all play out in the legislative field. How are the ...UK regulatory and procedural constraints dealt with in this debate? The article first analyses a number of amendments relating to abortion rights, highlighting the role of the executive, the discursive framework in which debates take place, etc. Then, it looks at the interplay of scales triggered by this issue. The most striking example is that of the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland by the Westminster Parliament in the summer of 2019, in the face of the political deadlock preventing any decision at Stormont. In such unprecedented situations, the UK Supreme Court, although not part of parliamentary practices strictly speaking, has a significant role to play, as do the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations. A cluster of multiple actors emerges, who interact within a cluster of political considerations. A game of inter-national alliances sets up in which the local Assemblies, Westminster and Downing Street seem to triangulate. The conclusion highlights the growing role of the judiciary and the fundamental rights turn, which may suggest that courts more than parliaments will shape developments in abortion rights in the years to come.
Significant parts of the EU's legislative process remain shrouded in secrecy. In informal trilogues, representatives of the three main institutions negotiate compromises behind closed doors which are ...subsequently rubber-stamped in public meetings. While most research on (EU) transparency focuses on the availability of documents, this article investigates how much information on trilogue proceedings is shared with the general public through European Parliament (EP) committee meetings as the only forum to which public account must be rendered during the negotiation process. This article analyses the degree to which trilogues are reported back on, and the quality of feedback provided. Although the EP requires its trilogue negotiators to report back to its committees after each trilogue, the majority of trilogues is not reported back on at all, or not in time. Where feedback is given, its quality is often only poor. The EP thus does not deliver on its promises, which seriously undermines the legitimacy of the EU's legislative process.
Informal negotiations have become the norm in the European Union legislative process. Yet, researchers are divided over the effects of this change on the European Commission's ability to defend the ...content of its proposals from modifications by the co-legislators. This article addresses this puzzle by using a fine-grained measure of whether informal negotiations took place which includes trivial agreements, namely legislation adopted in first reading because the co-legislators agree on the content, as a specific category. The results suggest that informal negotiations do not lead to more changes to the Commission's proposals than the formal process. This calls for a better consideration of trivial agreements in studies of the European Union legislative process.
Why do EU actors promote secluded fora of decision making even as they have committed themselves to open and public lawmaking? How do they perceive and reconcile the ensuing tensions in practice? ...These questions, arising amidst growing public controversy, point to a blind spot in the scholarly agenda on EU lawmaking, which has overwhelmingly focused on the games institutions play. From an interpretivist perspective, we argue that rules are 'made' not by detached officials, but by practitioners puzzling out the meaning of their actions in their everyday experiences. Based on extensive interview material, the article captures trilogues as 'politicised diplomacy' and shows how they have become a 'permeable institution', shaped by dense flows of exchange between 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. The article helps pinpoint to what extent and how trilogues challenge democratic norms; and it punctures the myth of trilogues as quiet politics dominated by producer interests.
Despite the importance of supermajority rules in protecting minorities, our understanding of supermajority rules has been limited to the experience of the U.S. Senate. This study seeks to contribute ...to our understanding of institutional choice by introducing another case of supermajority-rule adoption. Once known for legislative brawls, the National Assembly of Korea reformed its procedures in 2012 to require a supermajority to pass controversial legislation. The evidence presented in this study suggests that supermajority rules were adopted in an attempt to reduce chaos and uncertainty in the lawmaking process by shifting the legislature from a norm-based one to a rule-based one. This article demonstrates this by drawing on official documents, interviews, and an automated text analysis of newspapers.
This article traces the origins of European legislation during the legislative policy-making process. It identifies three phases where parts of the text of legislative acts can be developed: (1) ...agenda-setting; (2) intra-institutional decision-making and (3) interinstitutional negotiations, depending on whether the content of the legislation originates respectively in the Commission proposal, the co-legislators' positions or trilogue negotiations. Using a newly developed text-mining technique which computes in which phase each word of a legislative act originally appears, the article examines the relative importance of each phase and explores how it is affected by interinstitutional conflict. Applying this method to 219 legislative acts adopted between 2012 and 2018, it finds that most EU legislation originates in the agenda-setting phase, and that the new content developed during trilogue negotiations is limited. However, the importance of the agenda-setting phase decreases in cases with high levels of interinstitutional conflict.
The Council of State is the consultative constitutional body par excellence in the institutional architecture of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is a major actor in legislative procedure, along ...with parliament and the government. This procedure is characterised by a shuttle between the Council of State and the Chamber of Deputies and the existence of a three month suspending veto granted to the Council of State. The Council of State can be compared to a reflection chamber and its opinions can therefore have a considerable influence on the preparation and, sometimes, the content of legal standards in Luxembourg. The question regularly arises as to whether the political system of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg does not actually turn out to be bicameral and whether the Council of State is in fact an upper chamber. In order to answer this question, it is necessary to delve into the history of the Council of State, whose roots go back well before its creation in 1856.
Este trabajo analiza cómo los escenarios de alta fragmentación parlamentaria han condicionado el ejercicio de la función legislativa. Esta realidad ha dado lugar a prácticas parlamentarias inéditas ...que han influido en la actividad legislativa desde las elecciones de 2015. Se examinarán cuáles son las tendencias que se observan en relación con la tramitación parlamentaria de las iniciativas legislativas y de los decretos leyes en el Congreso.
In 2009, a network of scholars identified the legal framework associated with coastal management in eleven Latin American countries. They found an important lag in several countries, including ...Colombia. According to many scholars, a clear regulatory framework is of the utmost importance for integrated coastal management; however, the hurdles to reaching this goal have been poorly analyzed. This article aims to illustrate the challenges and barriers to legislate on coastal and marine issues in Colombia. The methodology and analysis used in this study can serve as an example to other Latin American countries. We combined comparative, documentary, and analytical research techniques to describe the current Latin American state-of-the-art legal framework. Additionally, from 16,224 gazettes (official records of the Congress of Colombia) we identified 80 bills concerning coastal and marine activities for a period of 17 years. However, only 2.1% of those bills addressed marine or coastal issues from the perspective of planning and management procedures. Instead the majority focused on social uses and economic activities. This research identified the difficulties that could be faced by a country in regulating its coast from an integrated perspective. These findings could support future procedures to approve coastal laws in Latin America and other countries on the world.
PDF
