Responses to the Study Guide Questions for

Session A-1, Slide #14

Question 1

What do you expect from this course? Does the scheme of learning proposed seem likely to meet your needs? If not, in what respects?

Huma: Since this course is not taught in any institution this is a very good opportunity for learning legislative drafting .It is a specialized field a and not a lot of people in Pakistan have taken a course like this to learn about it. It is a very good concept because most of the laws which are made in Pakistan are usually made in a few days or dictated by the whims of some interest group or party. When a research report this drafted it brings forth the reality, the pros and the cons and then the law which is designed is according to the needs and therefore is in a better position to be implemented.

Abid: I would like to avail this opportunity of placing on record my appreciation that we are fortunate in receiving help and advice through this course which we could not get in ordinary way. Legislative Drafting has great importance as the question is engaging the attention of legislators, jurists and sociologists in most countries including our country. The determine factor of Legislative Drafting has lost much of its position in the context of modern and more enlightened views on the functional value of law, which not only has spawned unbearable hardships for the people by creating countless insoluble problems, but also eroded the very foundations and negated the raison for the creation of our country.

Christopher: I expect to learn techniques for drafting effective legislative.  By effective legislation, I mean law that will cause behavioral changes which are instrumental in resolving a social problem. The scheme of learning seems likely to meet my needs. 

Ali: I intend to learn the skills necessary to initiate a institutional or a behavioral change and thereby enabling an environment of development not of the state it self but of the state through its people. the scheme of learning focuses hardcore on trasparency and institutional changes or changing the repititive pattern. I believe that this is necessary to a great extent, but for most third world countries bload economic measures and changes also play a significant role in development even though such measures would be supplemented by transparency and institutional effectiveness. I moreover felt that for laws to bring a change the laws should be more descriptive rather than prescriptive as this would quite certainly lead to a command theory (i.e. law commanding itself on the edge of a sword) rather than the people feeling themselves (certainly through a greater transparency in the system) being under an obligation to observe them not out of the fear that a sanction would be imposed over them but for the reason that they feel an obligation to observe, quite rightly as Mr. HLA Hart observed in Concept of Law.

Mavis: Well, I am expecting to increase on my theoretical understanding of legislative drafting. I was trained in drafting way the traditional apprentice way in Zimbabwe by drafters who incidentally had been trained by the Seidmans in the early 1980s. I wish therefore to learn more of the jurisprudence and theory behind drafting. Well, I am satisfied with the mode of learning as outlined. Should there be any shortcomings, these will be revealed as we go along and thus raised at that time.

Valerie: What do you expect from this course? I expect to improve my legislative drafting skills. I honestly don’t know if the scheme of learning is likely to meet my needs on this specific project, but I am certain I will improve my drafting skills thanks to this course.

Marilyn: I expect to develop competency in legislative drafting.  For me this is critical as I see there is a dire need in the Caribbean region at this time for persons with drafting skills.

Most of the countries in the Caribbean are operating with out-dated legislation, in a global environment which is dynamic and one in which the development agenda is increasingly being determined by the relationship established by globalization and liberalization in trade, technological advancement and the shaping and re-shaping of new Strategic alliances between groups of countries/regional blocks.

Many of our developing countries and more specifically these of the Caribbean region, which is my focus, while operating with archaic legislations which are not enforced or inadequately enforced due to the absence of supporting regulations. One of the critical problems these countries face is their inability to incorporate many of the international trade and development agreements/trade contracts/ international protocol for social and economic   development, precisely because of the absence of technical capacities and capabilities in the field of legislative drafting which could ensure the translation of such internal agreements and protocols into implementable national legislation.

For me therefore, it is essential that I become multi-skilled.  In this way and as such my objective is to combine my training, experience and expertise as a  development planner, with my training in law and legal drafting to fill a gap in the core-competency required to enact effective and implementable legislation for social  change in the Caribbean sub-region. As a Development Planner, I have a direct responsibility for ensuring that planned state intervention initiatives get to the people for whom they are targeted, that these measures are congruent to the social and economic need of the target population and that they are delivered in an efficient manner. I see myself as an agent of social change and the planning and development process as a mechanism through which national and local resources can be harnessed for improving the socio-economic conditions of  local communities. My training in Law and legal drafting will equip me to be more effective in my work as a Development Planner.

Question 2 

Specify one aspect of the proposed course that strikes you favorably?

Huma: It is a learning experience, for me all the aspects are favorable. However the opportunity to take this long distance course is very favorable as it would not have possible for me to come to Boston to take this course .

Abid: The scheme is facilitating Legal transformation, and to understand such phenomena as the root cause of all problems, and solutions of Legislative Drafting. This course has created an access to solve social problems through Legislative Drafting.

Christopher: I am particularly impressed with a) being assigned an experienced editor and b) having a mechanism for involvement with the other drafters and editors.

Ali: The ability to interact with people over a diverse range and being in a close and proximate contact with assigned editors who have vast and invaluable experience in not only the field but also their lives.

Mavis: I have always viewed legislative drafting as purely a technical job, i.e. putting into laws what the policy makers (read politicians in the jurisdictions in which I have worked) would have decided. My job would thus be limited to drafting within the technical rules, ensuring that what I draft is within the constitution. The idea that what I draft can bring about democratic change is fascinating and I wish to learn more about how that will work out.

Valerie: One aspect of the course that strikes me favorably is the experience of those teaching and editing it.

Marilyn: I quite like this idea of interaction through the bulletin board and the “learning by doing process”

Question 3

Do you have any suggestions for making the course more helpful to you in your work?

Abid: This course has pondered over the causes of the ever-cloying of Legislative Drafting and has succeeded to expose and analyze the every segment and aspect of Legislative Drafting.

Christopher: It’s too early to make any suggestions concerning the course.

Ali: Even though I belive the petite jurisprudential debate in the initial pages of the manual should not have been there, but I hope to realise its presence over there for some obvious reason as the course progresses.

Mavis: Again I think this question can only be answered at the end of the course.

Valerie: My only suggestion thus far is to consider simplifying the materials and format. What’s a “stream” anyway? Why have two streams AND audio tapes AND a textbook AND a schedule of assignments? Who is my group? What is the course bulletin board – the emails I send and get copied on? I think I have simply been out of school too long.

Marilyn: Make the introduction in A Stream Guide more relevant to the changing global economy particularly as it relates to issues of globalization and liberalization in trade. For many developing countries that have traditional structural relations of production and exchange with developed countries, the changes brought on by changing trade relations and increase competition, removal of preferential trading arrangements  to name a few, are sinking the developing nations deeper in debt and increasing poverty of these nations.

Some of the critical consequences:

Consider  the Issues of Redistribution with Growth

Consider the Role of Donor Agencies

• Emphasis on Development grants and loans from external donor agencies, which come with stringent conditionalties, increases the debt burden social development impact is limited,  not reaching the majority of the population below the 20th income percentile (the poor and vulnerable with limited incomes, the old and indigent and the women headed households that are the groups in greatest need).

• Loan and grant conditionalities require that state intervention measures through so called “poverty reduction projects, in the shelter, social and infrastructural services  sectors, call for affordability in the part of   government and the targeted population -both must be able and willing to pay for the services and particularly, for governments, they must be able to recover cost through the reduction in submissions of level subsidies.