2022 CALC Council elections

Voting is only 27 June 2022 to 3 July 2022 (inclusive) New Zealand Standard Time.

Only full CALC members can vote.

Associate CALC members are ineligible to vote.

If you are unsure whether you are a full member of CALC, and so eligible to vote, then before trying to vote, please email Ross Carter on Ross.Carter@pco.govt.nz.

For the link to the voting page [live for that voting week], log in and go to the Members' Area. 

Legislative responses to COVID-19

See the information table at this new page.

CALC Online Conference 2022

See the conferences page for information about this conference. 

This information includes the following:

• the call for papers,
• the conference program (now available in the Members' Area) – the response to the call for papers was very pleasing indeed, many thanks to all who submitted proposals,
• material related to the 2022 CALC ordinary general meeting (when available), for example, speaker biographies (now available in the Members' Area), and
• nominations and candidate information for positions on the CALC Council.

General meeting and elections 

A general meeting of CALC will occur on day 1 of the online 2022 CALC conference, 18 July 2022.

CALC elections for 2022 will be by personal electronic vote only.

Voting, for full CALC members, is in the week 27 June 2022 to 3 July 2022. 

Members will vote for President, Africa Region representatives, and Europe region representatives. 

The Constitution and election rules are available at calc.ngo/constitution-and-rules.

Detailed voting process information has been and will be emailed to all CALC members.

Results will be announced in the general meeting on 18 July 2022, and notified to CALC members.

Upcoming events

Statute Law Society: Independent Review of Administrative Law -- 14 July 2022

The Rt Hon The Lord Faulks QC will discuss the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law.  

Lord Faulks was Chair of the Panel which was disbanded in January 2021 following the submission of their report to Government. 

Date:  Thursday, 14 July 2022 -  6 – 7pm (UK time) 

Venue:  Online or in person at UCL Faculty of Law, Bentham House, 4-8 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG

Cost:  This event is free to attend

Registration will open shortly. For more information, click here.

Call for Papers: Colloquium on Parliamentary Accountability

Where: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 

When: Dates to be confirmed in Fall 2022. 

Deadline for the call for papers: 1 August 2022.

For the call for papers, click here.

CIAJ Legislative Drafting Conference: 8-9 September 2022

 The biennial Legislative Drafting Conference (in person in Ottawa and online) will tackle the most important challenges in modern legislation. The conference will include a wide range of speakers from Canada, the UK and beyond.

For more information, click here.

2022 IAL Palermo Conference: 14-15 October 2022

The IAL Conference 2022 will try to set the parameters for this research looking at other disciplines, such as law and linguistics that may help legislative drafter who wants to know how a piece of legislation has performed and the extent to which its goals have been achieved. The conference is expected to be held virtually and on-site at the University of Palermo. The programme will be posted in due course. For more information, click here. 

Statute Law Society: 2022 Lord Renton Lecture: 9 November 2022

Dame Elizabeth Gardiner DCB QC (Hon), First Parliamentary Counsel, will deliver the 2022 Annual Lord Renton Lecture.

Date and time: 9 November 2022, 6pm (UK time). 

For more information, click here.

RSS feeds

RSS feeds have been set up for this webpage -- see the footer block below.

To set up an RSS feed, copy the URL for each feed into an RSS reader, as follows:

• The Loophole: calc.ngo/rss/loophole.xml
• The Newsletter: calc.ngo/rss/newsletter.xml
• Conference papers: calc.ngo/rss/papers.xml
• Conferences: calc.ngo/rss/conferences.xml
• Employment: calc.ngo/rss/employment.xml
• What’s new: calc.ngo/rss/whats-new.xml

Past events

Drafting Workshop, 28-29 June 2022

The UWI is hosting a Legislative Drafting Workshop to be facilitated by Mrs. Jonetta Jeet Ramsahai scheduled for 28-29 June 2022. A fee is charged to attend. 

For ease, note the steps below to register and attend:

1.      Register via the link: https://forms.gle/TdeinfCf4CpZgj5f9

2.      Pay the fee (provided for online via the options laid out in the registration form),

3.      Submit proof of payment to law@sta.uwi.edu (wire transfer receipt)

4.      The virtual link will then be provided to attend. 

Webinar on Legislatures in Times of Crisis -- Ukraine -- 16 June 2022

The organizers of the Seventh International Conference on Legislation and Law Reform cordially invite you to attend a free, not-to-be missed legislative webinar hosted in cooperation with the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and USAID.

Join us to learn how the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine has operated during the Russia-Ukraine war.

The webinar will feature two speakers from the Verkhovna Rada, followed by a question and answer session.

Time: Thursday, June 16  
10:00 – 11:30 AM EDT
(5:00 – 6:30 PM Eastern European Summer Time) 

To register for the webinar, click here. 

What goes where? ALRC webinar 24 May 2022

A comparative discussion of the legislative puzzle -- As the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) moves forward with its current inquiry into the simplification of corporations and financial services legislation, it is turning its attention to regulatory design and the hierarchy of laws. Relevant questions include: How should the statutory and regulatory framework be designed to support complex areas such as financial services? Where should the law be located to achieve coherence and navigability? If the law needs detail to function, whose job should it be to provide it? Join the ALRC as it hosts a panel of international experts from Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK to discuss these and related issues.

TUESDAY 24 MAY 2022 AT 4.30PM AEST
2.30PM AWST, HKT, SGT | 6.30PM NZST | 7.30AM BST

For a flyer, click here.

To register for this free webinar, click here.

Statute Law Society Lecture, 11 May 2022

Speaker: Denis Edwards, Barrister. Formerly Lecturer in Law, University of Strathclyde and Assistant Professor of Law, City University, Hong Kong. Vice Chair of the Statute Law Society. Attendance: Tickets to attend in-person at UCL Laws (Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG) are limited for this event. Options are available to attend online via zoom. Please choose the correct ticket when making your booking.

Book your place

Statute Law Society event -- Annual Lord Renton Lecture, 25 November 2021, 6pm UK time 

What makes good statute law: a judge's view
Speaker: Lady Arden of Heswall, Justice of the Supreme Court
chaired by The Hon Mr Justice Garnham, Chairman of the Statute Law Society

An on-demand recording of this lecture is available at this link:

Statute Law Society Annual Lord Renton Lecture - YouTube

Recordings of Legislative Drafting Webinars

On demand recordings of 2 webinars in the iLegis and Penn Law series Bicontinental Perspectives on Legislative Drafting are available at these links:

• The Ethics and Politics of Legislative Drafting - YouTube
• Legislation as an Interdisciplinary Challenge Using Environmental Law as an Example - YouTube

Recording of Rule of Law and Subordinate Legislation Webinar, 29 September 2021 

Time: 29 September 2021, 6-7 pm (UK time)

Speaker: Sir Jonathan Jones, KCB QC, former HM Procurator General, Treasury Solicitor and Head of the Government Legal Services.

Recording: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8885191 

Paper: click here.

Rules as Code 101 webinar recording

A recording of the AUSCL / CALC Webinar in September 2021 is now available in the Members' Area.

The recording is also available from LinkedIn, but only to subscribers to the AUSCL channel on LinkedIn.

 

Other CALC notices

Meredith Leigh appointed new First Parliamentary Counsel

Congratulations to Meredith Leigh on her appointment as the new First Parliamentary Counsel, Australian Government Office of Parliamentary Counsel.

Honours for 2 exceptional legislative drafters 

CALC’s President, Geoff Lawn, says: “2 CALC members have been made a Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath in this year’s UK Queen’s Birthday Honours. These are our very own Brenda King, our Immediate Past President, and Elizabeth Gardiner, First Parliamentary Counsel in the UK OPC. This is such wonderful and well-deserved recognition of their many years of service, and it is great to see the work of legislative drafters recognised in this way. I have congratulated Brenda and Elizabeth on behalf of CALC.”

Congratulations to Peter Quiggin on his appointment as a Queen's Counsel

CALC members congratulate Peter Quiggin PSM on his appointment as a Queen's Counsel.

Hon Christian Porter MP, Attorney General for Australia, made the appointment announcement on 15 October 2020.

Mr Quiggin PSM is First Parliamentary Counsel, Office of Parliamentary Counsel. He has served as Australia’s First Parliamentary Counsel since 2004. Mr Quiggin was awarded a Public Service Medal in the 2008 Australia Day Honours List for outstanding public service in delivering the government's legislative agenda at a time of significant legislative change and in a number of critical areas.

Peter has also served as CALC's President from 2011 to 2017. As CALC members appreciate, Peter also showed outstanding leadership and service in that role.

Above is a recent photo of Peter with the banner that celebrates OPC’s 50th anniversary.

Pacific Toolkit: From policy to legislation

Congratulations to the Pacific Islands Law Officers' Network (PILON) and Australian Attorney-General's Department on launching this Toolkit.

The Toolkit is available for download here.

Cancellation of CALC Conference 2021 – Bahamas July 2021 

CALC's Council has decided to cancel the 2021 CALC Conference that was to be held in the Bahamas in July 2021.

For more details, see Geoff Lawn's CALC President's report in the December 2020 CALC Newsletter at the Newsletters page.

Meeting of Commonwealth Law Ministers and Senior Officials
Colombo, Sri Lanka, 4-7 November 2019

• CALC Activity Report
• Outcome Statement for the Meeting.

 CALC Conference 2019 -- Zambia, 1-3 April 2019

This Conference was held at the Avani Victoria Falls Resort, in Livingstone, Zambia, 1-3 April 2019. 

Conference papers for Zambia, April 2019 are in the Members’ area (member log in access only).