1.1 - Describe processes used for law making

• Government Green paper is open for public consultation and debate.
• If public agree and support the proposal, the Green paper turns into a White paper.
• White paper is where the law is more formally set out.
• White paper is also known as the Bill.
• The Bill enters House of Parliament through either House of Lords or House of Commons.
• The Bill goes through many stages: First Reading, Second Reading, Committee Stage, Report stage, Third Reading and Royal Assent.
• Royal Assent is when the Bill is signed by the monarch making it an official law, a formality as the monarch has to sign.
• Examples of laws that have come into effect through government process include the Law on Stalking and Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.
• Dealing with stalking was inadequate, as per a 2012 parliamentary inquiry which found that 120,000 victims were stalked each year.
• Only 53,000 incidents of stalking are recorded by the police, and only 1 in 50 lead to imprisonment of the offender.
• Judges from the past determine law for judges of the future.
• When deciding the verdict or what sentence to pass, judges would look at similar cases and decide based on those.
• If the case is one of a kind, the judge would decide what to do, setting the precedent.
• Judicial precedent can be avoided in two situations: overruling and distinguishing.
• Overruling is when a higher court decides that the decision of a lower court was wrong, for example, RvR (1992) Marital Rape case.
• Distinguishing is when a judge decides that there are significant differences in the facts of the current case.
• Judicial precedent only applies if the legal issue and facts of the case are similar, for example, Read v Lyons (1947).
• Parliament can make statutes or laws.
• Judges take Acts of Parliament and decide how it should be applied, done by senior judges in higher courts.
• The three rules used when applying the law are the literal rule, the golden rule and the mischief rule.
• The literal rule is the first rule used by a judge, the words of the statute are given their original meaning, the judge doesn’t try to make sense of the words of the statute.
• The golden rule is used if the judge believes that using the literal rule provides an absurd result, then they will use this rule to find another meaning of the words of the statute to avoid that absurd result.
• The mischief rule gives the judge more discretion, the courts will look at what the law was before the statute was passed to find what gaps the statute was intended to cover.