Law Standards Act
An act to define the standard of all laws in the Coalition of the South Pacific
1. Scope
(1) All bills, amendments, and repeals brought before the Assembly should be written in a formal and consistent manner.
(2) No bill or amendment will be brought to a vote in the Assembly unless it follows the formatting outlined in this act.
2. Formatting of Bills and Amendments
(1) Titles should be bolded and centered.
(2) Subtitles should be italicized and centered.
(3) The Charter and all laws passed by the Assembly that have at least four articles should feature a table of contents after the subtitle with links to anchors at the start of each article.
(4) The following should be observed for articles, sections, and sub-sections:
- Articles should be numbered and bolded.
- Sections should be numbered with parentheses, unless there is only one section without any sub-sections.
- Sub-sections should be lettered with lowercase letters.
(5) Addendums should be numbered and at the bottom of all bills, regardless of where the referenced material is in the bill, and placed in a quote box.
3. Amendments and Repeals
(1) The standard format for an amendment will be to note which law, article, and section is being amended, and to quote only that part of the law.
(2) Additions of words will be formatted in green text.
(3) Subtractions of words will be formatted in red text with a strike-through.
(4) Ellipses will be used to indicate an intentional omission of a whole article, section, or sub-section.
(5) The Chair will not put to vote an amendment that copies an entire law, when only individual parts of the law are being amended.
(6) If a legislator moves to repeal only specific sections of a law, then the amendment procedure must be used.
(7) If a legislator moves to repeal an entire law, the Chair will quote the entire law and note that the entirety of it will be repealed.
4. General Rules
(1) Sections should be written in such a way to reduce wordiness without losing the spirit of the text.
(2) All titled sections should be followed by a line break before starting a new section.
5. Reformatting of Laws and Legislation
(1) For the purpose of this act, the Chair of the Assembly will bring all previously written laws into compliance with the standards outlined by this act.
(2) The Chair of the Assembly may bring proposed legislation into compliance with the standards outlined by this act before bringing it to vote.
(3) The Chair of the Assembly may renumber articles, sections, and sub-sections where appropriate.
Addendum 1 – Example of an Amendment
THE CHARTER OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC
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IV. THE LOCAL COUNCIL
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- The Local Council representative will have the power to cast have an additional weighted block vote worth of one-fifth 20% of all non-abstaining votes cast on bills, not including the block vote, giving them a one-sixth share of the total vote, excluding abstentions. The Chair will calculate how many votes are allotted to the representative at the close of each vote, rounding them to the nearest whole number, and will then add the representative’s total votes to the final tally.
Addendum 2 — Example of a Table of Contents
Regional Officers Act
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Table of contents
- Regional Officer Power Definitions
- Regional Officers
- Executive Discretion
- Limitations