Law reform or legal reform is the process of examining existing laws, and advocating and implementing changes in a legal system, usually with the aim of enhancing justice or efficiency.
Intimately related are law reform bodies or law commissions, which are organizations set up to facilitate law reform. Law reform bodies carry out research and recommend ways to simplify and modernize the law. Many law reform bodies are statutory corporations set up by governments, although they are usually independent from government control, providing intellectual independence to accurately reflect and report on how the law should progress.
Law reform activities can include preparation and presentation of cases in court in order to change the common law; lobbying of government officials in order to change legislation; and research or writing that helps to establish an empirical basis for other law reform activities.
The four main methods in reforming law are repeal (get rid of a law), creation of new law, consolidation (change existing law) and codification.
Read more about Law Reform: Definition, Correlation With Judicial Reform, Relation With Economics, Russian Example
Famous quotes containing the words law and/or reform:
“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)