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Victorian Reforms in Legislative Drafting

Victorian Reforms in Legislative Drafting VICTORIAN REFORMS IN LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING by FRED BOWERS (Vancouver) Among the many political, administrative and social reforms for which we are indebted to the Victorians is one which has not received much attention, despite its far-reaching effects in government and society as a whole; this is the gradual improvement in the language and form of Acts of Parliament brought about by the efforts of a handful of men -- politicians, lawyers and civil servants -throughout the nineteenth century. The merest glance at the two extracts below, one from an Act of 1801 and the other from an Act of 1891, reveals a tremendous change in expression and form, from a dense, verbose and repetitive style to one of clarity and accessibility. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the major contributions to this marked improvement of the expression and form of British statutes. Pre-Victorian Drafting and its Critics Up to the early nineteenth century bills had been prepared in a variety of ways . The earliest statutes were drafted by judges of the King's Council in response to petitions to the monarch; they were generally short, written in Latin or French up to the end of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Legal History Review / Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis / Revue d'Histoire du Droit Brill

Victorian Reforms in Legislative Drafting

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1980 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0040-7585
eISSN
1571-8190
DOI
10.1163/157181980X00109
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

VICTORIAN REFORMS IN LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING by FRED BOWERS (Vancouver) Among the many political, administrative and social reforms for which we are indebted to the Victorians is one which has not received much attention, despite its far-reaching effects in government and society as a whole; this is the gradual improvement in the language and form of Acts of Parliament brought about by the efforts of a handful of men -- politicians, lawyers and civil servants -throughout the nineteenth century. The merest glance at the two extracts below, one from an Act of 1801 and the other from an Act of 1891, reveals a tremendous change in expression and form, from a dense, verbose and repetitive style to one of clarity and accessibility. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the major contributions to this marked improvement of the expression and form of British statutes. Pre-Victorian Drafting and its Critics Up to the early nineteenth century bills had been prepared in a variety of ways . The earliest statutes were drafted by judges of the King's Council in response to petitions to the monarch; they were generally short, written in Latin or French up to the end of

Journal

The Legal History Review / Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis / Revue d'Histoire du Droit – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 1980

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