Law Commission influences Law Reform Model Answer

• The Law Commission is a permanent, independent, statutory body that was established by the Law Commission Act 1965. Section 3 of the Law Commission Act 1965 states ' The objective of the Law Commission is to "identify areas of law where reform is necessary, codify the law, repeal obsolete laws, consolidate and modernise the law".
• It consists of five legal experts chosen from the judiciary, legal profession and legal academics. The current Chair of the Law Commission is Sir Nicholas Green and its 14th programme is underway having been launched on 24th March 2021.
• The Law Commission is asked to consider specific areas of law referred to it by the Lord Chancellor or a government department and may also choose other areas itself to consider. It considers reviewing an area of law by determining its importance; the extent to which the law is unsatisfactory and the potential benefits from reform, suitability; where the independent non-political Commission is the most suitable body to conduct the review and resources; valid experience of Commissioners and staff, funding available, and whether the project meets the requirements of the program.
• It will first research the law it is considering and then will produce a consultation paper to allow experts and politicians to comment. It will then produce a final report, which will include a draft bill if they consider a change to the current law is necessary.
• Despite the research undertaken, the Law Commission itself cannot implement the reforms that I recommends, that is a task for Parliament.
• One of the main objectives of the Law Commission is to Reform the Law. The Law Commission can produce reports which look at the problems with the current law and propose reforms to the law. This has been successful in some cases such as the Fraud Act 2006 which came from a 2002 report and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 which came from a 2006 Law Commission Report.
• Another objective is to Repeal and Consolidate older Laws. The Law Commission can also play a part in repealing old and out-dated laws, this is shown when the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1998 repealed 150 out-dated laws after research by the Law Commission.
• Each year the Law Commission produces around five consolidation bills which bring together all the existing statutory provisions previously located in several different Acts into one Act of Parliament. A successful consolidation Act was the Justice of the Peace Act 1997 concerning the role of Magistrates. Much of the laws of sentencing were consolidated in the Powers of the Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 however, since this Act was passed, Parliament has made three more Acts of Parliament relating to sentencing.
• The Law Commission are also responsible for Producing Draft Legislation. The Law Commission can produce model bills which show how an old law could be replaced. This was shown by the Draft Criminal Code Bill 1993 which showed how the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 could be modernised. However this was never implemented.
• Codification of the Law is one of the Law Commissions main objectives. The Commission believes that the law would be more accessible to the citizen, and easier for the courts to understand and apply, if it were presented as a series of statutory codes. As a preliminary step, they are working on a number of projects that aim to simplify aspects of criminal law, for example the Offences against the Person Act 1861.