Revised edition of Singapore’s Statute Book, with simpler language of the laws, to launch end-December

[The_King]

SINGAPORE: Over about six years, 30 law drafters combed through thousands of pages of Singapore’s statutes to update them and make the language more understandable to the public.

The process is now complete and the revised Statute Book will launch on Dec 31, comprising more than 500 Acts of Parliament in almost 27,000 pages.

It would be the first universal revision of Singapore’s laws since 1985. That edition, which came into force in 1987, contained 387 Acts and about 8,000 pages. 

The revision was undertaken by the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) and the Law Revision Commission.

The goal was to improve its readability, so that more people may better understand the laws without having to go through a lawyer, the AGC’s Chief Legislative Counsel Jeanne Lee told CNA.

New and improved features include simplified and modernised language, the AGC said on Sunday (Dec 19).

“Plain English is used as far as possible, including gender-neutral language where appropriate. Archaic words and long expressions are replaced with simpler alternatives without any change in meaning,” it added.

The word "shall", for example, is replaced with "must" where relevant, while a person facing a drug charge is referred to as "the defendant" instead of "him".

There are also streamlined and more informative citations, said the AGC, as well as a comprehensive legislative history for each revised Act.

While legislative histories were provided for previous editions, the latest one comes with additional information about the progress of the Bill, amendments made to the Act over time and other details. 

Information on predecessor Acts that were repealed is also included and presented in a diagram for a simpler understanding.

GENESIS OF THE PROJECT

The initiative to revise the language of Singapore's laws has its genesis in the Plain Laws Understandable by Singaporeans or PLUS project that began in 2013. 

While the official start date for the revision was in 2017, more than 60 officers began laying the groundwork from 2015.

The overarching objective is to ensure that Singapore's laws are understandable and accessible to the public, Ms Lee told CNA.

"We had already started to evolve our drafting style of new laws. However, revising the entire statute book was the only way we could try to update all the laws, past and present," she said. 

She added that it was also timely to do so given that the last universal revision took place in 1985. Many new Acts had been enacted and existing ones extensively amended since then. 

In the universal revision, drafters aimed to make the Acts more readable, checking cross-references, weeding out obsolete provisions, as well as having some consistency in house styles and expressions across all Acts as far as possible, Ms Lee said.

"Laws were previously written for judges and lawyers as its main users. Latin phrases and legalese tended to be used in those contexts, but these would have been understood within the profession," she explained. 

"The laws could have been very detailed and prescriptive or very dense in their text. For instance, the law usually contains many conditions, qualifiers or exceptions to a general rule, and sometimes these were all packed into one sentence that ran on without a break.” 

Since the 1990s, there was a deliberate and consistent move to draft laws in a clearer and simpler way, Ms Lee added.

"For instance, we try to express one concept per legislative sentence. We use separate provisions to set out the general rule, the conditions and the exceptions. We try to keep our sentences short and use paragraphing, avoiding convoluted expressions wherever possible."

CHALLENGES FACED BY THE TEAM

Perhaps the biggest challenge in revising the legal language was to make sure the meaning of the law was not inadvertently changed, said Ms Lee.

"This is probably the single biggest challenge in any revision because even a comma or a different placement of a word can change the meaning of a provision," she said.

The latest revision phases out the word "shall", which can mean different things. While it connotes an obligation most of the time and is therefore changed to "must", it is sometimes declaratory as in "shall be valid" meaning "it is valid". 

"The challenge was to understand the word in each context," said Ms Lee.

"Along the way, we also developed a deeper appreciation of our legal heritage – due to our history, we had British laws, Indian laws, laws from the Straits Settlement government, Malaysian laws and private Ordinances," she said. 

"We realised that it would be a pity to lose that by modernising all the laws, so we decided to preserve the language of certain laws so that we keep the ‘voice’ of past legislation."

The team of about 30 drafters faced a "formidable" volume of work, the scale of which they did not fully appreciate when they first began, she said.

Tracing the legislative history of each Act was another challenge, especially for the older Acts and those with predecessors that have been repealed. "These resources are not online, and the team needed to make multiple visits to various libraries," said Ms Lee.

The other challenge was in ensuring consistency in the edits across the Acts, as there were differences in style and expression with 30 drafters working on them. To address this, they had various checklists of standard and non-standard changes, but it was not that straightforward as every edit needed to be considered in its context.

Still, Ms Lee said the team hopes its work would help more people understand Singapore's laws better without needing to consult a lawyer.

"We also hope that the legislative history provided at the back of every Act will lead to a deeper appreciation of the history of our laws," she said.

The 2020 Revised Edition will be accessible at Singapore Statutes Online and in hard copy.

Source: CNA/ll(gs)