Revision of the Laws

Definition

The printing of, or the editorial process of preparing laws by repealing obsolete laws or consolidating the laws.

Legislation

The main legislation on the revision of the laws of Saint Lucia is the Revised Edition of the Laws, Cap. 1.07 (the Act) which commenced on 1 May 2004.  The Act makes provision for the revision and consolidation of laws and publication of the laws in various forms including bound books; a collection of booklets; loose-leaf booklets; CD ROM or other means of electronic storage; a data bank accessible by remote computer and Revised Booklets.

Formatting of the legislation in the Revised Edition of the Laws is different from the laws published by the Government Printing Corporation.

Role of the Attorney General

• The Attorney General is the Law Commissioner under the Act as Cabinet has not appointed another person as Law Commissioner.
• In accordance with the Act, in preparing the revised editions of the Laws, the Attorney General may —
• Omit—
  • all Acts or parts of Acts which have been expressly and specifically repealed or which have expired or have become spent or have had their effect,
  • all repealing enactments contained in Acts and also all tables and lists of repealed enactments, whether contained in Schedules or otherwise,
  • all preambles to Acts where such omissions can, in the opinion of the Commissioner, conveniently be made,
  • all enactments prescribing the date when any Act or part of it is to come into operation, where in the opinion of the Commissioner such omission can conveniently be made,
  • all amending Acts, or parts of Acts, where the amendments effected thereby have been embodied by the Commissioner in the Act to which they relate,
  • all enacting clauses;
• Consolidate into one Act any 2 or more Acts in pari materia, making the alterations thereby rendered necessary and affixing the date that seems to be most convenient;
• Alter the order of sections or other subdivisions in any Act, and in all cases where it appears to the Commissioner to be necessary so to do, to renumber any sections or other subdivisions;
• Alter the form or arrangement of any section or other subdivision in any Act by transferring words, by combining it in whole or in part with another section or other subdivision or by dividing it into 2 or more subsections or other subdivisions;
• Transfer any enactment contained in an Act from such Act to any other Act to which such enactment more properly belongs;
• Divide any Act into parts or divisions;
• Add a long or short title to any Act which requires it, or to alter the long or short title to any Act;
• Supply, alter or delete marginal notes, headings or subheadings to any section or other part of any Act;
• Correct grammatical, typographical, and other similar errors in any Act and for this purpose to make verbal additions, omissions or alterations not affecting the meaning of such Act;
• Shorten or simplify the phraseology of any Act;
• Make such adaptations of or amendments in any Act as may appear to be necessary or proper as a consequence of any constitutional changes in Saint Lucia;
• Make such formal alterations to any Act as are necessary or expedient for the purpose of securing uniformity of expression;
• Supply tables showing the arrangement of sections of any Act;
• Supply such chronological tables of enactments as may appear to the Commissioner to be desirable;
• To arrange related laws into topics or titles, and to assign chapter numbers to individual related laws,
• And to do all things relating to form and method, whether or not similar to the foregoing, which appear to him or her to be necessary for the perfecting of the revised edition of the laws.

Distribution

The Act also authorizes the distribution to persons, offices, Departments and institutions as Cabinet directs.

Publication

A contractual arrangement may be entered with a publisher under the Act to facilitate the production of a data bank and publication of the revised edition of the laws.  Therefore, the following publishers have been contracted for the identified years of revision:

The publisher has:

• To create and publish a subscription based online version
• To create and publish a citizens free access version
• To create and publish a loose-leaf update
• To update the Laws database
• To update the online content.

A person may obtain the laws on the LexisNexis website a link to which is provided.