Who actually drafts legislation in all its nitty gritty detail in the U.K.? And what is the process like? It seems surprisingly meticulously drafted and most elaborate as to account for every conceivable scenario and counter argument that one might ever encounter or think of. Often it is so meticulous that there are provisions that one can’t make sense of in themselves but once I’ve hears them explained then they actually make perfect sense. So who’s job is it to consider all of these things? Who went down the housing act and picked all the grounds that would be included in section 8, and then decided what length of notice period would go with each? Not just that, but like all the legislation in general. What is the composition process like? Or, who thought up the scheme that immigration would be out of legal aid in laspo for example, unless it implicated HRA art. 3? Innumerable examples abound by the question is basically the same. Not sure what tags to give this but please feel free to add any to think might be suitable.
Parliamentary draftspeople The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel is a group of government lawyers who specialise in drafting legislation. We work closely with departments to translate policy into clear, effective and readable law. Our role will often begin when legislation is first being considered and we will remain involved throughout the Parliamentary process and beyond. I’m afraid you give them too much credit - most legislation is good, some is bad, a small amount is appalling. In the latter case I place the several newly minted laws I've read where there are such large ambiguities that the only way to work out what's legal is to try something, get sued and have the courts decide - good statutes should leave litigants arguing the facts rather than the law as far as possible.
Like a lot of Scottish criminal law, there's no specific legislation, but it is illegal through common law. This was also true in the rest of the UK until the 1800s, when statutes were passed with the aim of making abortion law clearer (generally forbidding it). This didn't extend to Scotland leaving much of its abortion law unclear. The 24 weeks limit that the Scotsman article references is from Section 1 of the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended). This act did apply to Scotland. The act specifies conditions under which abortion within the first 24 weeks is legal, and that it is always legal when there is grave risk to the woman's health. When the circumstances of the pregnancy fall outside the provisions of the act, the existing Scottish common law prevails. For further information, this UN document provides a good summary of abortion law in the UK.
When do 33D(2) notices actually get used? When, in accordance with section 33D(1), Immigration Act 2014 the conditions at s.32D(2) have been met: The condition is that the Secretary of State has given one or more notices in writing to the landlord which, taken together,— (a)identify the occupier of the premises or (if there is more than one occupier) all of them, and (b)state that the occupier or occupiers are disqualified as a result of their immigration status from occupying premises under a residential tenancy agreement. What operational guidance procedures specify when the home office actually uses this provision? There are no, that I can find, open-source &quot;operational guidance procedures&quot; available. Those that may exist within the Home Office will in all likelihood follow the requirements and conditions stipulated in section 33D of the 2014 Act, section 8 Housing Act 1988, and at the Rules 83.9(5A) and 83.13(2) at Part 83 Civil Procedure Rules and Practice Directions. What can trigger the Home Office's operational procedures to actually send such a notice? When there is sufficient evidence, and it is proportionate and necessary to do so after taking in to account, for example, all the available information about the landlord, the occupiers' immigration status, and the public interest in terminating the agreement. Has the provision entirely fallen out of use? I have not been able to find any publicly available data on this topic, so one option would be to submit a Freedom of Information request for an answer. Also, from a comment: It is almost surely specified/codified in some operational guidance document somewhere, and even if such is non statutory guidance, courts are still semi-bound to lend it some weight in legal contexts. Whether or not to issue of a 33D notice is an operational case-by-case decision based on particular circumstances, so if a court (more likely an Immigration Tribunal) needs to consider the Home Office's internal mechanics, authorisation requirements, quality assurance and other such processes (which, hopefully, should be recorded in detail) then the normal production of evidence / disclosure / discovery rules would apply (with any non-relevant parts properly redacted to prevent unnecessary disclosure).
Scenario 1. It doesn’t matter what it says. If it was not legally ratified, it is not legally in force. There is no absolutely no paradox at all. It is essentially just a draft amendment and would be thrown out if any attempt was made to enforce it and challenged.
You've basically described two of the ends of the pole in theories of jurisprudence (there are dozens of ends). There is no theory of law that relies purely on &quot;spirit&quot; (also no theory that actually relies on the letters uses=d in writing law), instead, everybody interprets the text (the words enacted by the government) and some people supplement their interpretation with consideration of &quot;other factors&quot;, such as assumed legislative purpose. Certain scholars and judges are inclined to put most weight on the actual wording of the law, while others are inclined to let purposive considerations dictate the interpretation of a law. Interpreting law by W.N. Eskridge is an informative guide to supplementing a reading of the statute with anciliary considerations. Antonin Scalia is the best-known proponent of the textualist approach.
Regulations - Yes, Acts of Parliament - very rarely In in the united-kingdom diagrams are found in regulations, for example legislation dealing with roadside symbols. There are two kinds of legislation in the UK: Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments (normally called Regulations). The procedure by which an Act of Parliament is passed is that it has to be approved by both Houses of the legislature and then receive Royal Assent (Royal Assent is a formality). The procedure in each House is that the main debates occur at the Committee Stage when amendments are proposed and voted on. At the next stage (Third Reading) the House votes again on whether to approve the Bill in its amended form. Statutory Instruments (Regulations) are issued by the government (executive) and are known as delegated legislation because the government only has power to issue a regulation if an Act (called the parent Act) gives it power to do so. As you would expect there are safeguards. First of all the courts can declare invalid (ultra vires) any regulation whose terms go outside the limits of the power delegated by the Parent Act. Sometime the parent Act will provide that Regulations issued by the government under delegated powers become law without further involvement of Parliament but sometimes an Act will provide for some limited further Parliamentary scrutiny. This can be either by the Positive Resolution (the regulation will not become law until Parliament approve it) or by the Negative Resolution procedure (the regulation will become law unless Parliament passes a resolution annulling it). A key point, in the context of the question, is that neither the Positive nor the Negative Resolution procedure allows Parliament to amend the regulation - Parliament only has a binary choice to approve or disapprove. Of course if they disapprove then the government can issue a new amended regulation which then goes through the same process but the Positive/Negative resolution procedure does not allow Parliament itself to amend any regulation. I think this explains why diagrams which are sometimes found in regulations are rarely found in Acts. Constitutional proprieties require any Bill to be amendable and any member of the legislature can propose a amendment. If the Bill included diagrams then there would be huge practical problems because any member who wanted to amend a diagram would have to produce his own amended diagram which he might not be able to do/might not have time to do before parliamentary deadlines. So constitutional proprieties would normally mean that in practice Bills must be solely words. Regulations however cannot be amended by Parliament (see above) so such considerations do not prevent regulations from containing diagrams. Having said that normally Bills will only contain words, there is this example of an Act which includes a diagram of a symbol. That symbol, however, is defined in an international convention so in practice no parliamentarian would want to amend it. I know of no examples in the UK where a Bill (as distinct from regulations) contains an image which a member of the legislature might want to propose an amendment to.
States have a general police power, meaning that they can pass laws about whatever they want unless there's a specific reason they can't. A state does not have to give special justification for why something is in the realm of stuff they can regulate; someone challenging it has to say what specific section of the Constitution it violates. For a time, the Due Process clause of the US Constitution was considered to imply freedom of contract. This time ended in the 1930s. The doctrine of a constitutionally protected freedom of contract is pretty much completely dead. A state can't abridge the freedom of contract for no reason, but that's because just about any law needs some reason to be allowed. The level of review is that the law is rationally related to a legitimate state interest; this is not a very demanding level of review. Source State bar associations are given power by laws making it illegal to practice law without being a member of the bar and requiring licensed lawyers to comply with bar rules. State bars that control admission to practice are generally government agencies (specifically, agencies of the court system). When the state bar is not a government agency, attorney discipline and licensing is handled by a government agency (lawyers might have to join the bar, but the bar has to accept licensed lawyers as members; the bar's power in these cases is limited to recommendations to the courts).
This happened despite the fact that the marriage and Bible verses requirement were almost surely illegal and similar things have happened on and off, mostly in rural courts with non-attorney judges, for pretty much as long as the U.S. has been a country (and earlier). The trick is that the orders take effect unless someone appeals them, and since deals like this are usually a result of a plea bargain which waives rights to an appeal, and even if the result is simply imposed by the judge, one has to consider if taking the case up on appeal, having the sentence reversed, and then having it remanded to the same judge for resentencing would be worse from the perspective of the defendant, given the broad authority of a sentencing judge in a minor case like this one, than simply accepting the illegal sentence. Also, cases that aren't appealed never create precedents and aren't generally available among resources used by legal researchers, so they systemically evade documentation in easily available sources.