STREAMLINING OF LEGISLATION BY PUBLIC AUTHORITIES: TECHNICAL-LEGAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive theoretical-legal analysis of the technical-legal method of streamlining legislation as an independent line of rulemaking activity of public authorities, namely, the rulemaking technique for streamlining legislation. The necessity of clearly distinguishing the concept of “streamlining of legislation” from “systematization of legislation” within the conceptual-categorical framework of legal science as distinct areas of public authorities’ rulemaking activity is emphasized, thereby underscoring the presence of specific technical-legal methods involved in streamlining legislation. The essence of streamlining legislation consists in bringing the form of legislation into a certain order without altering its content, which is determined by the linguistic, logical, and procedural rules of rulemaking technique. The features of the rulemaking technique for streamlining legislation should be examined through the analysis of its three forms: linguistic (legal linguistics), logical (legal logic), and procedural (the procedure for adopting normative legal acts as regulated by legislation). The primary objective of legal linguistics, as an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of linguistics and law, is to ensure maximum clarity and precision in legal communication, thereby eliminating potential manipulations in the language of normative legal acts and enhancing the efficiency of the legal system. A modern trend in legal linguistics is the adoption of new standards for legislative language that align with the “plain legal language” concept. Legal logic is a field of knowledge that studies the specifics of thinking in the realm of law, which is constructed both in accordance with the laws of formal logic and reflects the regularities of social existence. Accordingly, the logical technical-legal method of streamlining legislation is primarily associated with the logical rules of structuring the texts of normative-legal acts, which are an integral part of legal design – a human-centered approach to presenting legal information. Regarding the technical and legal procedures for streamlining legislation, attention should be drawn to international experience with specific procedures for adopting normative legal acts that “cleanse” the law without altering the legal regulation of social relations (that is, they change the form of the legislation without changing its content).