Legislative Drafting

• Author: Gordon R. Woodman
• Position: Reader Faculty of Law University of Birmingham England
• Pages: 462-469

Legislative Drafting

by

V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe

[London: Cavendish Publishing Ltd, 1993: 294 pp.]

Professor V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, long-time practitioner and teacher of

the art of legislative drafting in a number of Commonwealth countries,

has written a book which ranges across all aspects of that art, from the

use of capital letters to the significance of constitutional limitations on

the legislative process, from the formation of the legislative sentence

to the judicial interpretation and construction of the statute. (He has

further experience of this last aspect, having been a Judge of the High

Court and Supreme Court of Ghana).

Each chapter contains detailed, specific instruction on the mode of

drafting legislation, examples which illuminate difficult questions, and

reflections on controversial legal questions. This is not a textbook or

reference book in the sense of a comprehensive statement of the rules

to be followed in drafting statutes. Neither does it offer a complete and

sufficient course of instruction. Legislative drafting, its practitioners

unanimously agree, can be learnt only by long and intensive practice.

"Learning by doing" is the only effective learning here. Professor

Crabbe has been conducting intensive courses under the auspices of

the

Commonwealth Secretariat for some years, latterly at the University of

the West Indies. His book will fortify the process of learning by doing.

It can be read from cover to cover, browsed through, and repeatedly

studied with profit by the student. It is also of interest to others, such

as this reviewer, not aspiring to the heights of legislative composition,

but who recognise the vital importance of experts in this field to the

efficiency of legal systems.

When so much is illuminated, it may be unreasonable to ask for

more. Recognising that, this unreasonable reader nevertheless regrets

not having the benefit of Crabbe's considered views on the decision in

Pepper

v. Hart [1993] A.C.593. The text of the book was completed

some time before that decision, and the author was unfortunately not

invited to update it during a delay in publication. In that case an

appellate committee of seven Law Lords held, with the sole dissentient

voice of Lord Mackay of Clashfern L.C., that the House should

exercise its power to depart from its previous decisions by

overthrowing the rule which excluded reference to the legislative

history of a statute for the purpose of determining its intent. It is now