 In its effort to clarify French laws and improve their consistency, the Law Commission of the French Parliament has launched a website inviting the internet community to submit suggestions for their simplification. The website is very basic insofar as it operates as a very centralized interface which does not facilitate interactions between users. Yet, in spite of (or maybe due to) its minimalism, the website has already generated many comments. Eventually, the website might have to evolve towards the much hyped “web 2.0” functionalities which allow for more user participation. The French Parliament may consider following in the footsteps of New-Zealand which has created a wiki to review its Policing Act.
The wisdom of crowds to improve legal drafting On September 19, the Law Commission of the French Parliament invited internet users to submit suggestions for the simplification of French laws through a dedicated page entitled “Simplifions la loi” (Let’s simplify the law!) on the Parliament’s website. This participatory project was introduced by Jean-Luc Warsmann, president of the Law Commission and Member of Parliament for the UMP, the ruling conservative party. In the website’s mission statement, the Law Commission acknowledges the inflation in legislative texts and the degradation in their quality which, the commission argues, “not only leads to their weakening and to [an increased degree of] legal uncertainty but also adversely affects France’s attractiveness [for foreign investments] and competitiveness [in the world].” Quoting Montesquieu who said that “useless laws weaken the necessary laws”, the Commission states its aim of making the law “more accessible, more easily readable and understandable both for the citizens and for those in charge of its application.” To achieve this ambitious goal, the Law Commission wants to involve everybody willing to help. The website asks for suggestions to “abrogate statutory provisions which have become useless; find ways to ensure their consistency; and to redraft those that are unintelligible.” Web participation 1.0 style …for now at least The way people can contribute to the project is basic yet proving quite effective. The webpage is only a simple, and at first quite daunting, reply form where anybody can post any comment on any law they think needs simplification (see image below).  Go on then, simplify the laws... This is web participation at its simplest and could be derided as very “web 1.0” by more tech savvy users. Indeed, it is a very centralized way of collecting information whereby individuals submit their comments to the Law Commission which then has to analyze, moderate and review them. Crucially, the webpage does not offer the features of so-called “web 2.0” applications which allow for more participation from users. For instance, the French website does not enable users to directly make comments or start discussions on the suggestions posted by their peers. However, these shortcomings could easily be addressed but, more importantly, they do not seem to have hampered the users’ enthusiasm for the project. In spite of (or maybe thanks to) its minimalism, the project has had a strong start. Two weeks after its launch, more than 80 pages of comments had already been submitted and published by the Law Commission. The suggestions come from a wide variety of contributors such as individuals or associations and cover an extremely wide range of subjects such as tax law, commercial law, labor law and property law. Jean-Luc Warsmann said that all suggestions will be “thoroughly reviewed” by the Law Commission which will “regularly make reform proposals based on these suggestions and will inform their authors.”(in 01 net.) If the success continues, the Law Commission might eventually choose, or indeed, need to adapt its interface to better cope with large amounts of information and to foster further participation. One option would be to put in place a forum. This should not present too much of a technical difficulty since the Parliament’s website already offers an online forum for people to comment on laws currently being discussed. Other steps could include allowing people to make comments on existing suggestions, rate the most useful suggestions or choose the issue the Commission should address in priority. Also, providing users with customized email or RSS updates would facilitate participation and debate. Another, more radical, way for French lawmakers to garner the power of “web 2.0” participation could be to follow New-Zealand’s lead in using a wiki to engage the community in law reform. The Kiwiki(or wikiwi) Act closer to e-democracy? On September 26, media reports covered the story (see here, via Slaw and Boing Boing) that the New-Zealand Police had launched a wiki, inviting members of the public to contribute to the drafting of the new Policing Act. A wiki is, according to Wikipedia, the best-known wiki, “a medium which can be edited by anyone with access to it, and provides an easy method for linking from one page to another.” In effect, the New-Zealand Police had allowed their citizens and indeed any English-speaker in the world with an internet connection to elaborate “their version” of the future Policing Act. The New-Zealand Police has been overwhelmed with responses from around the world. The fully-open wiki has now been closed and the submissions have been consolidated into one website. The resulting wiki Act (see image below), as at 1 October 2007, is accessible from the site as a document of record. The New Zealand Police explains that “along with other inputs from traditional consultation channels, it is a resource that can feed into the upcoming parliamentary law-making process.”  New-Zealand's Policing Act Wiki It will be interesting to see how the politicians will take into account what could be dubbed as the kiwiki (or wikiwi) Act (Can I, and more importantly, should I claim paternity for either terms!?). In any case, this experiment will be closely watched, scrutinized and, if successful, emulated the world over. In reality, the New-Zealand experiment may prompt the re-launch of similar projects that had been initiated a few years ago in France. On the Juriconnexion discussion group, which specializes in legal documentation and computing, the Village de la Justice, a law website, and Jean-Baptiste Soufron, a technology law expert and prominent blogger, discussed their past attempts with “open-source” law, pondering whether their projects should be re-launched and their efforts pooled together. Like in rugby, New-Zealand seems to have taken the lead in e-democracy by scoring a “web 2.0” try. But although France is not the favorite and seems to be lagging behind, it has been known to be able to pull off the odd upset from time to time (may the next upset happen in rugby rather in e-democracy, this Saturday in Cardiff!!!). Citizen participation and other themes discussed at the SCL and GikII conferences These latest developments in e-democracy and citizen participation in policy making give me the opportunity to make a note about the very interesting, and very topical, SCL and GikII conferences (click on the links for programs, abstracts and papers) held two weeks ago in London and during which those subjetcs were debated. Source
- La rédaction (avec Reuters), Les internautes invités à simplifier les lois françaises. 01net., 19 septembre 2007. - Arjun Ramachandran, Police wiki lets you write the law. SMH (via Stuff.co.nz), 26 September 2007. Illustration: Assemblée nationale (hémicycle du Palais Bourbon): Séance de questions au gouvernment. (Paris) Photo: F. de la Mure /MAE
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