A codifying Act involves the enactment of the whole of the
law on a particular subject, including all existing statute
and case law, with or without amendment. There is no legal
reason why virtually the whole of English law should not be
codified. The Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Marine Insurance
Act 1906 are examples of codifying Acts, which mean that it
is necessary to look no further back than 1979 and 1906 to
discover the whole of the existing law relating to the sale
of goods and marine insurance respectively.
Although it may appear useful to have all the law on a particular
subject encapsulated into a single Act, some areas of law
are by their nature extremely complex, and codification in
itself does not make them easier to understand.
Further, the methods of legal interpretation employed in English
courts involve the accretion of a body, sometimes a very large
body, of decided cases which must be consulted to discover
the interpretation put on an Act, codifying or otherwise,
by the courts, And, of course, Parliament may pass further
legislation supplementing or modifying the code.
The existence of a permanent Law Commission, which was established
by the Law Commission Act 1965 to consider and suggest amendments
to particular areas of law which might be referred to it from
time to time, may result in a greater degree of codification
in the future.
There is a possibility, for example, that in the not-too-distant
future the Commission will present detailed proposals for
the codification of the law of contract. One difficulty here,
however, is that so much of the time of Parliament is occupied
with current political, social, economic, and fiscal matters
that governments are never very keen to allocate sufficient
time to deal with what is sometimes referred to as ‘lawyers’
law’.
See also Consolidating
Acts
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