Building Legislative Capacity
Law plays a critical role in the society. At the highest level of abstraction, the functions of law in society may be summarised thus:
- To legitimize governmental institutions;
- To allocate power in society;
- To order society by providing a framework or model for social and individual interaction, and
- To control members of society by coercion for the maintenance of peace and order.
The rule of law is otiose and sterile if the agencies charged with the responsibilities of developing the law such as parliament and law reform agencies cannot discharge their responsibilities effectively. In several developing countries, Kenya included, law reform bodies are grossly underfunded and therefore lack the requisite capacity to initiate much needed reforms in the law nor to address the problem of moribund laws. Besides, in Kenya, as is the case with other third world countries, the two houses of parliament face several challenges that undermine their capacity to undertake their constitutional mandates effectively. Such challenges include the following:
- lack of institutional capacity of Parliament to support law reform efforts i.e. professional and technical expertise; capacity of Members of the National Assembly; lack of continuity due to high elections; inadequate turn-over during communication organisational technological gap; inadequate financial resources;
- delays in enactment of laws following the initiation process;
- increasing parliamentary workload versus time and resources;
- defects legal, regulatory and procedural in the legislative framework;
- uncoordinated consultative and civic education approach on legislative matters
- lack of understanding and minimal participation in the legislative processes by the stakeholders
- minimum collaboration between government institutions and the National Assembly.
- Inadequate or ineffective consultation, sensitisation and lobbying of Members of the National Assembly
- law reform programme targeting a small group of e.g. specific Committee, parliamentarians individual Members as opposed to all Members of the Assembly
- inadequate follow up on the law reform process in relation to legislative processes in Parliament
- lack of strategic linkages between parliamentary processes and law reform processes e.g. strategic planning, civic education or outreach programmes
- lack of strategic linkages between parliamentary processes and law reform processes e.g. strategic planning, civic education or outreach programmes.
In view of the foregoing and with a view to strengthening legislative developments in Kenya, Legal Education Forum undertakes the following activities
- Carrying out civic education with respect to proposed legislations.
- Simplifying proposed legislation for ease of understanding by ordinary members of the public and where necessary translating the same into Kiswahili and other local languages.
- Appraising and reviewing proposed legislation with a view to giving parliament technical support on their advantages as well as disadvantages as well as highlighting the thorny issues that parliamentarians need to address before enacting the legislation.
- Undertaking regulatory impact assessment with respect to proposed legislations and legislative instruments.
- Enlightening the Kenya Law Reform Commission (KLRC) and the two houses of Parliament on legislative provisions that are inconsistent with the constitution.
- Enlightening the KLRC and the two houses of parliament on legislative provisions that actually violate provisions of human rights treaties ratified by Kenya.
- Bringing to the attention of parliament and the KLRC conflicting legislative provisions for purposes of harmonization.
- Bringing to the attention of Parliament and the KLRC legislative provisions that have become moribund and outdated owing to the passage of time and to other social, economic political, cultural and/or technological developments.
- Bringing to the attention of parliament and the KLRC specific matters that urgently need to be regulated through some appropriate legislation or legislative instruments.
- Undertaking legal research on any area of law that may be of interest to either KLRC or to any of the two houses of parliament.
