drafting

Codification and Progressive Development of International Law

The Codification Division forms part of the United Nations Office of Legal affairs providing secretariat services, legal advice and preparation of draft texts of conventions and other instruments to the Sixth Committee, the International Law Commission and special committees set up to codify and develop rules of international law on particular topics. The site provides information on the work of these bodies and a searchable database of Codification Division publications.

Australasian Parliamentary Counsel's Committee

Website of the Australasian Parliamentary Counsel's Committee (PCC), a discussion forum for the development of legislation. The PCC consists of the heads of the offices of Parliamentary Counsel for the Australian Commonwealth, the States, the ACT, the Northern Territory and New Zealand. PCC publications on national uniform legislation and a list of harmonised laws are available on the site, together with a page of links to sites providing legislation for common law jurisdictions. Parts of the site are password-protected. 

Parliamentary Counsel Office

The UK Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) is a team of lawyers based in Whitehall, London, who draft Government Bills for introduction into Parliament (except those relating only to Scotland). The site publishes an overview of the stages in the drafting of a bill and its passage through Parliament. A history of the PCO is presented, and other features of the site include an essay on legislative drafting by Geoffrey Bowman, and a set of links to parliamentary and government websites.

Drafting Legal Documents

A guide to legal writing, from the Office of the Federal Register, US National Archives and Records Administration. The guide is a sequence of linked topics on the basics of writing regulatory documents which include arrangement, headings, definitions, ambiguity, principles of clear writing and grammar. In addition, the site presents some links to plain language resources and a PDF copy of the Federal Register Document Drafting Handbook 1998 with amendments.

Maine State Legislature. Office of the Revisor of Statutes

The Office of the Revisor of Statutes of Maine State Legislature is responsible for the drafting and editing of legislation for the state of Maine in the United States. The Revisor's Office also maintains a database of statutes, and publishes the statutes online. This site publishes two documents: the Revisor's Report which details non-substantive changes to the database of statutes (e.g.

À la Recherche des Travaux Préparatoires : An Approach to Researching the Drafting History of International Agreements

Guide to researching the drafting history of international agreements, by Jonathan Pratter, Foreign and International Law Librarian at Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas at Austin. The guide was published in 2005 (and updated in 2017) on New York University's Globalex website. The author provides an introduction to travaux préparatoires, guidance on how to find them and details of publications which can help with this search.

Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel

Website of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel (CALC), which is hosted by the Australian Government Office of Parliamentary Counsel. CALC is concerned with the promotion of training and support in legislative drafting. CALC's newsletters and its journal, The Loophole, together with a collection of articles and papers on legislative drafting (many of which have also appeared in The Loophole), are available on the site. There is also information about CALC conferences and about training in legislative drafting.

Clarity

Website of Clarity, an international association of lawyers and interested lay people, whose aim is to promote the use of plain language in the legal profession. Clarity run seminars on legal drafting and publishes a journal approximately twice a year, which is presented in PDF format on the site.The journal includes articles, book reviews, news items and a section on practical drafting. Issues are freely available in full-text back to 1997. Other relevant articles also appear on the site along with a booklist and links to the websites of other plain language practitioners.

Edmund M. Morgan Papers on the drafting of the Uniform Code of Military Justice

This Harvard Law School Library collection contains digitised versions of 6,664 papers donated by Harvard Law School Professor Edmund M. Morgan, who was chair of the United States Committee on a Uniform Code of Military Justice (CUCMJ) in 1948. The Code replaced the separate codes that had previously existed for the Army and Navy.

Basic Law Drafting History Online

Website providing information and materials from the drafting history of the Basic Law of Hong Kong. The site is a joint project of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law and the University of Hong Kong Libraries. Materials are arranged into the following sections: Drafting Materials; News Coverage; the LEGCO Database and Textual History.

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