The importance of legislative drafting rules

Laws and regulations that are properly prepared and consistent with the legislative drafting rules are an important component of legal certainty and the rule of law. Legal certainty is, on the one hand, based on clear, unambiguous, comprehensible legal norms which determine in advance the status, rights, and obligations of individual entities and of all the bodies implementing the rules. Another essential component of legal certainty is the lawful and consistent implementation of the rules, which again depends considerably on the first condition i.e., the quality of the rules themselves.

Furthermore, legislative drafting rules are also important because they reveal the shaping and use of national legal terminology in time, considering legal, organizational, and political determinants. Legislative drafting rules have been created and enforced gradually in our historical development since the beginning of the official use of Slovenian language, initially treated as an equal language and later as an independent official language of the state as well as one of the official languages of the European union. The result of this development is that today Slovenian legal terminology and legislative drafting rules are completely on equal footing with those established in many large nations and with a much longer independent legal tradition. In addition, it also reflects a national emancipation in this field and gives a great opportunity for a proper use of the Slovenian legal language in practice.

Development of legislative drafting rules

Legislative drafting rules are not a static set of recommendations and arrangements, but necessarily reflect the ongoing search for new, better solutions in making legislation simple, understandable, and easy to read.

As we would like to continue working with everyone involved in the legislative process as constructively as possible, we invite you to send your opinions, dilemmas, views and proposals to our dedicated email address.

Seminars on legislative drafting

Since 2003, the Institute for Comparative Law at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, in cooperation with the Government Office for Legislation, has been organizing expert events with an aim of discussing a variety of topics concerning legislative drafting. Seminars bring together public officials, legal practitioners, judges, academia, and those who come across with the task of drafting legal documents. Their focus is on informing the public about current legislative drafting challenges and on building a broad professional consensus in the development of clear principles and guidelines of legislative drafting in the Republic of Slovenia.