Legislative drafting

Prerequisits:
No special conditions

Content:

1. Rules and guidelines for writing regulations.
2. Basic question and methods of legislative drafting.
3. Basic ways of legislative drafting.
4. Internal organization and components of the regulation.
5. Structural units (parts) of the regulation.
6. Internal components of the regulation.
7. Linguistic expression in regulations.
8. Specific examples of writing, expression and determination in regulations.
9. Reference in regulations and analogy.
10. Validity of regulations.
11. Amendments to regulations (amendments).
12. Retroactivity.
13. Authentic interpretation of the law.
14. Consolidated texts of laws (and other regulations).

Readings:

Required readings:

• Igličar, Albin. Zakonodajna dejavnost : viri, nomotehnika in zakonodajni postopek. Ljubljana: GV založba, 2011.
• Nomotehnične smernice - 3., spremenjena in dopolnjena izd. - Ljubljana: Služba Vlade Republike Slovenije za zakonodajo, 2018.

Objectives and competences:

Students will developgeneral competences:

• initiative and independence in decision-making;
• development and use of legal syllogism and argumentation, general communication skills, presentation of acquired knowledge inside and outside the organization and the international environment;
• ability to use different interpretive methods of interpreting legal texts.

Students will develop specifical competences:

• in-depth knowledge in the field of legislative drafting and its application in practice;
• ability to address specific professional issues using relevant legislation, case law, interpretative arguments and scientific methods and procedures;
• ability to connect knowledge from different fields (interdisciplinarity).

Intended learning outcomes:
After successfully completing the obligations, the student will be able to:

• prepare an act;
• prepare or correct an act using the rules of legislative drafting.

Learning and teaching methods:
Lectures with active student participation, case studies, individual and group research work, distance learning with ICT and presentations.

Assessment:

• written exam (50%)
• written assignment (50%)

The condition for taking the written exam is a positively assessed written assignment.

Lecturer's references:
Dr. Dušan Štrus received his PhD in 2007 at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana in the field of constitutional law. In 2011 he published a book entitled The Second Chamber of the Parliament with the presentation of the theory and practice of bicameral parliament. In 2017 he was appointed Secretary of the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia. He published more than twenty monographs as an author or editor, as well as articles in the field of constitutional, parliamentary and electoral law. Some of them have been translated into foreign languages.

References:

• ŠTRUS, Dušan. Drugi dom parlamenta. 1. izd. Ljubljana: Fakulteta za upravo, 2011.
• ŠTRUS, Dušan. Državni svet - že 25 let stičišče interesov družbe = The National Council - interconnecting society for 25 years. Ljubljana: Državni svet Republike Slovenije, 2017.
• ŠTRUS, Dušan. Reshaping the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia. V: ALBERT, Richard (ur.). Constitutional reform of national legislatures : bicameralism under pressure. Cheltenham (UK); Northampton (MA, USA): E. Elgar, cop. 2019. Str. 230-247.