Abstract

Accounts of good legislative process require a prior understanding of the features that make laws good. Yet many contemporary discussions of ways to improve legislative process say little about the quality of laws. Although it is widely taken as read that laws should not be unjust, too little is said about the importance of their being comprehensible and ascertainable, or about the requirements they set being feasible for those who are to comply. It is unclear whether certain widely discussed ways of improving legislative process, such as further secondary legislation, codes and guidance, or further (pre or post) legislative scrutiny will yield better laws. Much UK legislation creates problems not because it is unjust, but because far from providing the 'established, settled, and known law' that John Locke thought essential for civil society, it provides a churn of voluminous, temporary, complex and obscure law: in effect, unknown law openly arrived at