Exercise 1. 3

A visiting Ukrainian colleague is asking an English solicitor about the legislative process. Replace the underlined words in their conversation with alternative words from part C. Pay attention to the grammatical context. There is more than one possibility for two of the answers.

Natasha:	How is new legislation enacted?
Charles:	Well, initially the (1) draft legislation has to be (2) presented to both houses. The draft is (3) discussed several times. A committee has the job of checking that the Bill (4) incorporates the fundamental elements (5) agreed at the second reading. After this, the Bill is (6) shown again to the lower house.
Natasha:	Who does the (7) formal writing of the legislation?
Charles:	It’s (8)done by qualified barristers employed as civil servants, known as Parliamentary Counsel.
Natasha:	Who can (9) put forward Bills?
Charles:	The government and, less commonly, MPs.

Over to you.

Describe the process of making new laws in Ukraine. What are the strength and weaknesses of the process.

Subordinate legislation

Subordinate legislation is legislation made under the authority of an Act of Parliament. Sometimes the statute is a mere skeleton and the major part of legislation has to be built up the Secretary of State or by the minister with the administering of an Act. Subordinate legislation fills in the details of an Act of Parliament. Today legislation fills in the details of an act of Parliament.

Today the bulk of subordinate legislation in any given year is several times larger than the volume of statute law produced in the same period.

Custom

In the early period of the common law custom was a very important source of legal rules. Many such rules were incorporated into common law itself.

At the present time custom as such plays very little part in the development of law, partly because both the courts and Parliament plays such a large role themselves that they do not wait for the law to be shaped by custom. The principal role of custom today is to be found in the law of meetings, some of the rules in this area still being rules of custom.

MEDIATION

SECTION 2. SOURCES OF UKRAINIAN LAW

Part A. The History of the Ukrainian Legal System

The Ukrainian legal system is very close to the Romano-Germanic legal family. After the October Revolution of 1917 the establishment of the Soviet law in Ukraine was tightly connected to the spreading of soviet power and creation of Soviet state bodies. The peculiarity of the Soviet legal system in Ukraine was that it was based on the legal system of the Bolshevik Russia. That is, it was a reception in a very primitive form: the application of the laws of one state in the conditions of the other. As. in every federal state, in the USSR the competencies were divided between the Union and the Union Republics. Foundations of legislation, codes, laws, decrees of the Presidiums of the Supreme Councils of the USSR and Ukraine, various legal acts adopted by ail-Union and Republic Ministries, including those adopted jointly with the CPSU Central Committee, regulations, instructions, guiding materials, statutes, branch enactment and even the revolutionary feeling of justice were used as legal sources. Judicial practice did not belong to the legal sources. The access to the legislation was restricted. The criteria of such restrictions were not defined, but in essence it was a policy of depriving people of their individual rights and liberties.

After the independence declaration the need has appeared to build a new state and to reform the existing legal system in accordance with the state building tasks. So the main challenges stood for a new state: to reject the inappropriate dogmas of the soviet law and to establish the backgrounds and elements of market economy with its legal relationships. The promulgation of new legislation has begun with adapting relevant norms, the adoption of normative acts in the fields of relations, which had not been regulated by the current legislation, and development of the large codification embracing all areas of law. Joining the Council of Europe, Ukraine has taken obligations to improve its legislation in regards with the human rights protection, and to ensure legal and judicial reform. This gave a great impetus for the acceleration of systematic change in the legislative system of Ukraine, especially in the fields of civil and criminal law, as well as judiciary.