How is the rule of law established today?

My purpose will not be to discredit the functioning of the Legislative Assemblies, to list their faults, nor to analyze the causes of the well-known phenomenon of legislative inflation.

My intervention, inspired by my personal experience in committee, in the corridors, in the library or on the telephone, is deliberately intended to be positive and constructive.

I collaborate with the work of the Federal Parliament and have been observing it closely for 10 years: if the House and the Senate were purely recording chambers, with their power reduced to a mere shadow of its former glory, I would have wasted my time there. I am convinced, on the contrary, that Parliament is an exciting place provided one is involved politically, technically and humanly.

It is imperative to preserve and strengthen this federal institution, a meeting place and synthesis of French and Flemish cultures, very different in this respect from the atmosphere prevailing in the regional and community assemblies.

Far from being in crisis, Parliament is evolving. Interest in  parliamentary law is growing: the number of recent conferences and articles on legislative design, drafting, and evaluating laws is a sign of this. This interest seems new to me; it arose from criticisms and observations made about legislative “pathologies.”

Parliamentary procedures, made up of power relations, deadlines and timetables, political constraints and expertise, dialogue, consultation, forums, reports to public opinion, announcements, commissions of inquiry, pressure, lobbying, majority and opposition, political agreements, “octopod” negotiations, electoral deadlines, popular representation, rumors and backroom agreements, political control over the Executive, are very difficult to “manage”. Given the particularities of parliamentary time, ensuring the “total quality” of laws, their drafting and their monitoring is a complex undertaking: only those who undertake it can measure the constraints and difficulties.

I therefore propose today that we put forward some proposals with a view to improving the rules governing parliamentary procedures.

The proposed organizational improvements will take into account the very specific nature of the “parliamentary enterprise,” its human and material resources, and its purpose. “Management and audit” are fashionable. A general audit of the Assemblies would certainly be very useful.

A reflection on the process of law-making should be preceded by a reflection on the role, nature and meaning of law.

This question goes beyond the scope of my remarks. It is appropriate to keep it in the background at a time when the relationship with the law is undergoing a profound transformation and when we are questioning the basis of its authority in our weakened democratic regimes, in search of new modes of representation.

Was the law there to establish simple rules of the game, or does it still represent a certain common morality? This is a difficult question to answer.