CALL FOR PAPERS: NIGERIAN JOURNAL OF LEGISLATIVE LAW, PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE

Title: “Nigerian Journal of Legislative Law, Practice and Procedure”

Joint Publishers: Office of the Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly (DCNA)-Legislative Digest and the Association of Legislative Drafters and Advocacy Practitioners (ALDRAP).

 

Editor-In-Chief: Clerk, National Assembly (CAN)

Deputy Editor-In-Chief: Deputy Clerk, National Assembly (DCNA)

Executive Editor/Editor of the Book Review Section: Dr. Jerry Uhuo, NASS

Managing Editor/Editor of the Legislative Law Section: Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja, NILS

General Editor/Editor of the Legislative Law Reports/Case Notes Section: Barrister Emmanuel Anyaebunam

General Editor (Legislative Practice and Procedure Section): Nominee of the CNA

General Editor (Legislative Bills Analysis Section): Professor Sylvester Shikyl, SAN/Legal Services Directorate, NASS

General Editor (News from Nigerian Legislatures section): Nominee of the DCNA

General Editor (Budget, financial legislation and financial analysis of Bills section): Administrator of the NABRO or his/her representative.

Editorial Assistant/Secretariat Staff: Miss Victoria Nimi David with support from staff of the LEGISLATIVE DIGEST and ALDRAP respectively

Panel of 6 Independent Reviewers of articles submitted:

(1) One expert in legislative practice or procedure (former clerk of the House of Representatives-Barrister Gani);

(2.) One case law expert a retired judge of the High Court or law report expert

(3) one expert in legislative drafting of Bills, Motions and Resolution

(4) one expert in Budget and Financial legislation analysis.

Proposed Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/law-3

Proposed Index Publisher: HEINONLINE, USA

Editorial Trainer: Editorial Manager

Pagination: 140-200 pages per issue (Twenty pages per Section x 6 Sections of the journal).

Frequency of Publication: Bi-annual, two issues per year to be published June and December (with possibility of review and increase to quarterly publication).

Proposed Date of Publication of first issue: Friday June 29, 2018.

Proposed Time Frame and pre-publication activities for 1st Issue of the Journal:

 

CONCEPT NOTE:

The title of the journal: Nigerian Journal of Legislative Law, Practice and Procedure is based on key concepts of “legislative law” on the one hand and “legislative practice and procedure” on the other hand.

Legislative Law is defined as that genre of law that is produced by the Legislature as an institution. It is different from case law which is the product of courts of law and judges.

Although Nigeria inherited the common law legal tradition from Britain, wherein case law is predominant in the hierarchy of law, in modern times, even in Britain it is admitted that “legislation is now the most authoritative source of law”[1].

On the other hand, legislative practice and procedure refers to the internal rules, customs and traditions that are applied by legislators when they are deliberating on the floor of the chambers of their legislatures. The rules of legislative practice and procedure are based on an amalgamation of both written and unwritten rules that evolve over time.

Despite, the worldwide trend that has witnessed in recent times, legislation taking over precedence over common law (law derived from case law or judgements of the courts), and attention paid to development of legislative law in all the major legal systems whether it is civil law, common law and even plural legal systems, Nigeria has not yet paid much attention to legislative law and its legislative practice and procedure by way of publication of authoritative records of legislative law, practice and procedure. In the United States of America (USA) there is a significant attention paid to legislative law, practice and procedure to the extent that there are legislative law journals and legislative law is offered as a course in most USA University law schools. Also, in terms of legislative practice and procedure, the American Society of Legislative Secretaries and Clerks[2] was established in the year 1943.

 

In Britain there is a Register of Parliamentary lawyers and “Parliamentary Agents”[3] (non-lawyers) that is maintained by the Clerk of the UK Parliament.

 

Whereas in Nigeria, not much has been done to develop the area of legislative law, practice and procedure by way of publication, formation of associations etc. For example, the National Assembly of Nigeria does not currently have a publication of the Rulings of the Chair to provide guidance on gray areas such as whether the President is the only person permitted to submit Bills for ratification of treaties by the National Assembly, without allowing legislators to bring Private Member Bills for the purpose of ratification and domestication of treaties.

Despite this increasing important role of statute law (legislation), there is a dearth of publications on the practical methods of law reform and drafting legislation (statute law) within Nigeria. This is evident by the fact that there is currently no law journal within Nigeria that publishes articles on the practical approaches to apply when undertaking legislative drafting and law reform projects. This is alarming considering that within Nigeria, there are well over 100 law journals published by the over 45 Faculties of Law, of Nigerian universities not to mention the law journals of the Nigerian Bar Association and other institutions.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this situation is that legislative law or legislative drafting is not reflected in the mainstream of the curriculum for contemporary legal education. For example, legislative drafting is only taught to Nigerian law students as a two week course during the Bar Vocational training at the Nigerian Law School and not during the five year legal education at the Universities. This scant attention to legislative drafting in Nigeria’s legal education curriculum spills over into the legal practice arena considering that since the establishment of the Nigerian Bar Association over forty (40) years ago, it is only last year that this Association formally created a “Lawyers in the Legislature Forum”[4].

Regardless of the reasons, this neglect or failure to give attention to scholarship, legal practice and publication to the methods of amending and drafting legislation has had negative consequences for Nigeria. For example, ignorance of practical methods of drafting amendments and legislative drafting knowledge amongst members of the National Assembly’s Committee on Constitutional Review is one of the reasons cited for loss of over N4b (four billion naira) approximately $20m (twenty million US dollars) at the exchange rate of $1=N200 was expended in drafting the fourth amendment to the 1999 Nigerian Constitution that was rejected by the President. A civil society group has recently request for a refund of this sum from this Committee for the Committee’s failings.[5] Another recent instance of ignorance of legislative drafting methods is evident in the Sexual Offences Bill, which a senior advocate of Nigeria has described as an example of “legislative negligence”[6] due to the error of Senate of the National Assembly in stating 11 (eleven) years as the age of a child.

 

This law journal- Nigerian Journal of Legislative Law, Practice and Procedure-is an attempt to fill the huge gap in this area of law. It aims to serve as the official law journal of the National Assembly as the authoritative source of guidance on legislative law, practice and procedure.

It seeks to serve as both an academic scholarly and practitioners’ journal respectively. As a scholarly journal, it provides an outlet for publication of research findings as an journal listed in globally recognised index ranking namely-HEINONLINE. As a practitioners’ journal, it provides insight and guidance based on the publications of legislators, legislative staff and other experts in the field.

It aims to provide a forum and platform for expert legal analysis of the current corpus juris of Nigerian legislation and legislative BILLS.  

Besides, the legal analysis of legal experts, this law journal is innovative for several reasons: it aims to include other expert perspectives on legislation such as the analyses from economists and financial experts. It is also innovative because it includes a section on BILL ANALYSIS by experts who were not only lawyers but have expertise in the subject matter of the legislative Bills under analysis.

This proposed BILS Analysis section seeks to focus on the legal implications of legislative Bills. This is because the legal implications of a proposed Bill is perhaps the most crucial aspect of a Bill. In other words, if the proposals contained in a legislative Bill is illegal or unconstitutional, such a Bill has failed ab initio even if the economic analysis of such a Bill reveals potential profits. It is worth noting that even though the Bills are analysed from a legal perspective there is still room for inclusion of an economic analysis component as evident in the inclusion of a “COST-BENEFITS ANALYSIS (CBA)” segment using this journal’s of Bills Analysis” format.

 

The format of this journal’s Bill Analysis Report is set out below:

–Title

–Sponsor

–Objective

–Summary

–Background

–International/Cross Country Experience

–Comments

·         Content analysis

·         Existing legal order

•Cost benefit analysis

•Recommendations

·         conclusion

 

Proposed Stucture/Table of Contents of the Nigerian Journal of Legislative Law, Practice and Procedure:

1.      EDITORIAL

2.      Section 1-Articles on legislative law

3.      Section 2-Bill Analysis Report

4.      Section 3-Legislative Law Reports/Case Law

5.      Section 4-Legislative Practice and Procedure section

6.      Section 5-News from Nigerian Legislatures

7.      Section 6-Budget and Financial Legislation

8.      Section 7-Book Review 

 

Please submit papers and articles to:

Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja,

Managing Editor,

Nigerian Journal of Legislative Law, Practice and Procedure

tonyeclintonjaja@yahoo.com