How to amend a statute: The drafting and interpretation of amending legislation.

Abstract

This thesis looks at the drafting and operation of amending legislation in the light of two paradigms of statute law. Part One examines the paradigm which developed in Great Britain in the nineteenth century. That paradigm emphasized the fragmentary character of the statute law. Ilbert analysed the techniques of amendment and concluded in favour of the use of indirect amendment and against the use of textual amendment. Another paradigm of statute law developed in the United States, Canada and Australia in the nineteenth century. It emphasizes the potential coherence of the statute law and tries to realise this potential through statute revision and the use of textual amendment. The consequences of the use of textual amendment for the operation of amending enactments are examined. The thesis also considers the argument that the use of re-enactment as a technique of amendment is undesirable because it opens up for parliamentary amendment more of the act proposed to be amended than do other techniques of amendment. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)