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3 Liverpool L. Rev. 5 (1981)

handle is hein.journals/lvplr3 and id is 1 raw text is: 5 THE LAW COMMISSION: METI-IODS A ND STRESSES* P. M. North** When the Bill which became the Law Commissions Act 1965 was being debated in the House of Lords, Lord Wilberforce suggested that its objec- tives were to provide a fresh incentive and st imulus, and really to enter into a new dimension of law reform rather than to expand the existing methods .' Those eminently worthy aims were expressed nearly fifteen years ago and the task that I set myself tonight is to attempt to report on the progress made along this path of law reform and to ident ify some oft he pit- falls and potholes along the road. Such an account to be complete should seek to answer three questions: How does the Law Commission decide what to do? How does it set about making proposals for the reform of those areas of the law that it takes on board; and what happens to the final proposals that it makes? I have come to realise, however, that the answer to each ques- tion deserves a separate lecture. I doubted whether your patience on even so compulsive a topic as the Law Commission would last for three hours, and so I intend to concentrate on the third of the questions. I have chosen this question for two reasons. There exist already accounts by former Com- missioners of how wedecide what to do and how wedo it ,2 hough boththese elements of our work are not without difficulty at tihe inomnctit. Secondly, the purely factual information on these matters is available in our Annual Reports, whereas theconsideration of our proposals once we have reported is often concealed in the interstices of the procedures of Whitchall and of Parliament. Perhaps I might start to answer the question: What happens to the final proposals of the Law Commission? by providingsomestatistics. The Law Commission has produced 102 reports, of which about 70 proposed legislative change. Some of these took the form of proposals for minor amendments, followed by consolidation. Others are the 9 reports pro- posing repeal of obsolete legislation in whole or in part, i.e., Statute Law Revision. What remains aresubst antive proposals for law reform wit h dra ft Bills appended to the reports. There are about 50of them, of which just over a dozen have not been implemented. There is, however, an inevitable tilme lag between the submission of a report to the Lord Chancellor and the tite * This is the text of a public lecture delivered in Liverpool on 31 October 1979. It has been slightly updated since if was delivered. ** Law Counissioner for England and Wales; Fellow or Keble Cotege, Oxlord. I lansard, It. L. Deb. Vol. 264, col. 1172(1965). 2 E.g., Marsh, Law Reform in the United Kingdom: A New Instilttioual A pproach, 13 William and Mary Law Review (1971), 263; Gower Reflections on Law Reform, 23 University of Toronlo Law Journal (1973), 257; Diamond, The Work of the I iaw Connission, 10 t7he Law Teacher (1976), 1I; Lord Scarmau, Th(, jawahar/al Nehru Memorial Lectures (1978), esp. Lect ure II. 3 See Fourteenth Annual Report, 1978-1979.

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