Teaching Legislation
The Statute Law Society has good contacts across the range of bodies concerned with the production of legislation. A series of filmed interviews has been completed and distributed on DVDs to Law Schools. The DVDs feature a series of short interviews conducted with people directly involved in the process of the production of Acts of Parliament.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
How a Government Minister gets proposals accepted for presentation as part of the Government's legislative programme. Interview with Lord Falconer of Thoroton.
Michelle Dyson
Departmental Lawyer, Michelle Dyson, talks about the process within a Government Department for development of the policy ideas underlying legislative proposals.
Stephen Laws
Interview with Stephen Laws, First Parliamentary Counsel on the role of Parliamentary Counsel at the planning stage for legislation.
David Natzler
Interview with Parliamentary official David Natzler from the Public Bill Office in the House of Commons on The Parliamentary procedure for making an Act of Parliament.
Murray Hunt
Interview with Murray Hunt, Legal Adviser to Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights on the role of the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the legislative process.
Lord Justice Etherton
Interview with Lord Justice Etherton, Chairman of the Law Commission 2006-2009, on the role of the Law Commission in the legislative process.
The films also contain a video of a lecture given by Stephen Laws, First Parliamentary Counsel (the government’s chief drafter of legislation) to students at Oxford University on 11 October 2010 about the process of drafting an Act of Parliament.
The Statute Law Society Council has been looking at the teaching of legislation and encouraging a debate within academic circles on how this might be improved since the autumn of 2009 and it was out of these discussions that the DVD project took shape.
Background Notes & Papers
The Statute Law Society invited academics from leading law schools to a round table meeting on 30 October 2009 to discuss current teaching of legislation in law faculties and how it might be improved, bearing in mind the many demands on curriculum time.
The notes and papers listed below are intended as background material for those interested in this topic:
2009
Meeting with academics
1996
Legislation: Can we teach it?
2009
Structured approach to teaching legislation
2009
Legislation paper
2009
Teaching legislation
2009
Teaching legislation follow-up
2009
Statute law course outline
2009
Teaching statutory interpretation
The Statute Law Society gratefully acknowledges financial support from the UK Centre for Legal Education and from Herbert Smith LLP. Thanks are also due to Oxford University for hosting the interviews on their ITunes page.