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Measuring Legislation as a Tool for Better Laws: The Example of the Portuguese Legislation Observatory

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Exploring the Province of Legislation

Part of the book series: Legisprudence Library ((LEGIS,volume 9))

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Abstract

As Ulrich Karpen points out, the main purpose of legisprudence is to monitor and improve the quality of laws and to reduce their quantity. Within the framework of the research project started in 2005 at the NOVA School of Law, Lisbon—the Portuguese Legislation Observatory—data from the years 1976–2020 were collected (since the approval of the Portuguese Constitution), referring in particular to the volume of legislative production, it’s distribution by types of legislative acts, the subjects addressed, the influence of European legislation in national legislation, as well as observing practices related to laws. The project aims, also, to provide public access to the Portuguese Legislation Observatory database. This database was conceived to allow an overall analysis of the law-making process. From the collection and observation of these data, it is possible to draw conclusions and bring forward proposals on the effectiveness and efficiency of the current legislative practice and its compliance with the constitutional rules. Portuguese policies to simplify the legislation have been executed and have had results on the quantity of legislation enacted and on the citizens’ access to the law.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ribeiro et al. (2019), p. 168.

  2. 2.

    See e.g. Vargas and Ferreira (2019) with an explanation of parliamentary instruments to control the government’s activity.

  3. 3.

    Data collected by Portuguese Legislation Observatory. When the data were collected (7 October 2020), 177 bills presented in 2019 by MP’s were still in discussion.

  4. 4.

    See e.g. Sánchez de Dios (2019), p. 189.

  5. 5.

    Grzeszick (2016), pp. 61–87, sees that competing claims of the principles rule of law and democracy need to be reconciled.

  6. 6.

    Available at https://simplex.gov.pt/simplexmais/app/files/8926586c0ad2c9a5e0cc2bd56e30987f.pdf/.

  7. 7.

    In this article, other Better Regulation policies concerned with measures of simplification of administrative procedures will not be analyzed. In fact, in 2006, the SIMPLEX Programme predicted relevant measures on this subject (http://historico.simplex.gov.pt/).

  8. 8.

    Simplex (2017) is available at https://simplex.gov.pt/simplexmais/app/files/cd198ba7615a8ece81f4e6431c52c5fd.PDF.

  9. 9.

    Created by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers (Resolução do Conselho de Ministros) no. 44/2017, dated 24 March 2017. This project was updated and a technical unit was created by the Resolution of Council of Ministers no. 74/2018, 8 June 2018: UTAIL—Technical Unit of Legislative Impact Assessment.

  10. 10.

    Available at https://www.portugal.gov.pt/ficheiros-geral/programa-do-governo-pdf.aspx.

  11. 11.

    Available at https://simplex.gov.pt/simplexmais/app/files/c2beb3fe80370629c55c3f859a522eea.pdf.

  12. 12.

    Some laws had to be revoked by Law (Law no. 36/2019, 29 May 2019, and Law no. 56/2019, 5 August 2019).

  13. 13.

    The new (actual, 2020) Government’s Programme is available at https://www.portugal.gov.pt/gc22/programa-do-governo-xxii/programa-do-governo-xxii-pdf.aspx?v=%C2%ABmlkvi%C2%BB=54f1146c-05ee-4f3a-be5c-b10f524d8cec.

  14. 14.

    iSIMPLEX 2019 is available at https://simplex.gov.pt/simplex2019/app/files/e61c1def5c1fdbff7425ff29a592191a.pdf and SIMPLEX programma’ 2020–2021 at https://simplex.gov.pt/app/files/13c429b1b502e3899671afb1586c63c7.pdf.

  15. 15.

    Created by the Resolution of Parliament (Resolução da Assembleia da República) no. 53/2006, 7 August 2006.

  16. 16.

    http://www.Parlamento.pt. These reports are linked to each bill analyzed by UTAO.

  17. 17.

    This article is an important tool to be aware of all Better Regulation policies executed in Portugal.

  18. 18.

    http://www.oecd.org/gov/regulatory-policy/betterregulationineuropeportugal.htm.

  19. 19.

    The Decree-Law no. 70/2011, dated 16 June 2011, repealed 233 unnecessary laws.

  20. 20.

    Regional Regulatory Decree no. 10/2020/A, dated 24 April 2020, and Regional Legislative Decree no. 27/2020/A, dated 16 October 2020.

  21. 21.

    Bulletin of the Observatory of the Portuguese Legislation no. 7 (2017), NOVA School of Law, Lisbon, CEDIS, available at http://olp.cedis.fd.unl.pt/publicacoes/boletim_7/. See, also, Rodrigues (2017).

  22. 22.

    See again Bulletin of Observatory of Portuguese Legislation no. 7 (2017).

  23. 23.

    http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/scoreboard/performance_by_governance_tool/transposition/index_en.htm.

  24. 24.

    Bulletin of Observatory of Portuguese Legislation n. 6, NOVA School of Law, Lisbon, CEDIS, February 2015, available at http://cedis.fd.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Boletim-n.%C2%BA-6.pdf.

  25. 25.

    Nowadays, this subject is no longer available at NOVA, which was the first university in Portugal and the only one providing this subject. In fact, despite the fact that European University of Lisbon (Universidade Europeia)—https://www.europeia.pt/oferta-formativa/licenciaturas/licenciaturas/direito—provide a subject about Legislative Drafting Techniques (Técnicas de Redação Jurídica), there is no other university providing the Legisprudence subject in their graduate curricula.

    The Lisbon School of Law offers a post graduate course about Legisprudence and Legistics, as well as a workshop about regulatory and legislative drafting. NOVA School of Law, during the year of 2020, offered a brief E-Course of Legistics.

  26. 26.

    Guibentif (2007), pp. 6–7.

  27. 27.

    Although the laws’ data are collected from Official Journal (Diário da República).

  28. 28.

    Source: Observatory of Portuguese Legislation.

  29. 29.

    Order no. 73/XII, dated 22 November 2013.

  30. 30.

    https://www.parlamento.pt/sites/com/XIILeg/GTARCL/Paginas/default.aspx.

  31. 31.

    See e.g. Costa and Cid (2019).

  32. 32.

    Assembleia da República worked with limited functions. The Plenary met only once a week during a significant period of emergency state. Besides the reduction of plenary sessions, the legislative process to approve the bills from the government was shortened. These features reduce the Parliament role and increase government power: Lanceiro (2020).

  33. 33.

    The Emergency State was declared in Portugal, for the first time, by the Decree of President of Republic no. 14-A/2020, dated 18 March 2020.

  34. 34.

    The Portuguese Government, regardless of the pre-existing legal framework, approved a Decree-Law no. 10-A/2020, 13 March 2020, to adopt ‘extraordinary and urgent measures.’ Some doubts about the constitutionality of some measures are still in discussion. See, e.g., Lanceiro (2020).

  35. 35.

    The same reality was registered in other countries. See, e.g., the Annual Report. 2020 of the National Regulatory Control Council, available at https://www.normenkontrollrat.bund.de/resource/blob/656764/1810908/a2e0e6408df7e9204ccada01f0c162ce/2020-annual-report-the-crisis-as-a-wake-up-call-modernise-public-services-build-on-the-momentum-for-digital-change-make-legislation-easy-to-enforce%2D%2Ddata.pdf?download=1.

  36. 36.

    The first one was Order no. 3298-A/2020, dated 13 March 2020.

  37. 37.

    This date was chosen as a benchmark because the day after were published in the Official Journal the first set of COVID legislation (e.g. Decree-Law no. 10-A/2020 and Resolution of the Council of Ministers no. 10-A/2020).

  38. 38.

    Eleven (11) decrees-laws, fifteen (15) resolutions of the council of ministers, seventy-four (74) ordonnances, two (2) decrees and six (6) declarations of rectification.

  39. 39.

    One (1) law, fifteen (15) resolutions of the Assembly of Republic and one (1) declaration of rectification.

  40. 40.

    Thirty-five (35) decrees-laws, fifty-six (56) resolutions of the council of ministers, ninety-one (91) ordonnances, eight (8) decrees and six (6) declarations of rectification.

  41. 41.

    Twenty-two (22) laws, thirty-seven (37) resolutions of the Assembly of Republic and three (3) declarations of rectification.

  42. 42.

    Four (4) resolutions of the Regional Legislative Assembly, one (1) regional legislative decree and one (1) regional regulatory decree.

  43. 43.

    Four (4) resolutions of the Regional Legislative Assembly, six (6) regional legislative decrees and two (2) regional regulatory decrees.

  44. 44.

    Fourteen (14) resolutions of the Regional Legislative Assembly, two (2) regional legislative decrees and twenty-one (21) regional regulatory decrees.

  45. 45.

    Six (6) resolutions of the Regional Legislative Assembly, seven (7) regional legislative decrees and seven (7) regional regulatory decree.

  46. 46.

    One hundred and thirty-six (136) decrees-laws, one hundred and twenty-six (126) resolutions of the council of ministers, two hundred and forty-five (245) ordonnances, eleven (11) decrees and thirty-four (34) declarations of rectification.

  47. 47.

    Eighty-three (83) laws, seventy-six (76) resolutions of the Assembly of Republic and seventeen (17) declarations of rectification.

  48. 48.

    One hundred and thirty-three (133) decrees-laws, one hundred and thirty-five (135) resolutions of the council of ministers, three hundred and forty-three (343) ordonnances, twenty (20) decrees and thirty-eight (38) declarations of rectification.

  49. 49.

    One hundred and six (106) laws, one hundred and ninety-two (192) resolutions of the Assembly of Republic and twelve (12) declarations of rectification.

  50. 50.

    See Portuguese Government’s programmes of better regulation mentioned above, as well as Xanthaki (2017), pp. 292–293.

  51. 51.

    See Guibentif (2007), pp. 7–9.

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  1. NOVA School of Law, Lisbon, Portugal

    Sónia Rodrigues

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  1. Department of Legal Sciences “Cesare Beccaria”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Francesco Ferraro

  2. Department of Legal Sciences “Cesare Beccaria”, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Silvia Zorzetto

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Rodrigues, S. (2022). Measuring Legislation as a Tool for Better Laws: The Example of the Portuguese Legislation Observatory. In: Ferraro, F., Zorzetto, S. (eds) Exploring the Province of Legislation. Legisprudence Library, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87262-5_8

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