The Sources of Legislative Policy

Until the 1990s, the Mexican Congress functioned as a rubber-stamp institution whose main function was the approval of the presidents’ bills. The subordination of Congress to the executive branch produced, among other effects, the hindering of legislative policy analysis. Since government agencies had control over the policy process, it was not necessary for legislators neither to become policy specialists nor to invest resources and time in the development of professional staffs that could carry out policy analysis on diverse areas. However, as the process of democratization advanced, legislators started to create research centers and established civil service systems in order to professionalize the staff that supports legislative work. This chapter provides an assessment of the congressional policy analysis carried out in Mexico by focusing on the lower chamber (Chamber of Deputies) of the federal Congress. It argues that research centres and legislative committees perform three types of policy analysis. The limited functioning of the civil service system, the politicization of legislative staff, and low salaries are the main factors that undermine the quality of policy analysis in the Chamber of Deputies.

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Իրավունքի և օրենքի կոլիզիաները իրավունքի փիլիսոփայությունում

Scientific Artsakh ◽

10.52063/25792652-2021.1-64 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 64-85

Author(s):

Artur Ghambaryan

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Natural Law ◽

Point Of View ◽

The Other ◽

Scientific Methods ◽

Legislative Policy ◽

The Law ◽

Law And Justice ◽

The One ◽

Legal Understanding

The aim of the article is to reveal the collisional relationship between justice and the law in the philosophical dimension. The main objectives of the article are to analyze the contradictions between law from the point of view of broad legal understanding, as well as the answer to the question of how law enforcement agent should act if, in solving a specific case, an outrageous contradiction between law and justice is encountered. The author used a number of scientific methods, in particular, historical-legal-comparative methods. The author concludes that supporters of a broad legal understanding consider the issue of contradiction between law mainly from the point of view of legislative policy, however, they do not discuss the issue of how the law enforcement agent should act when an obvious contradiction between law is encountered in a particular case. In the article the sayings «dura lex sed lex» (The law [is] harsh, but [it is] the law) and «lex iniusta non est lex» (An unjust law is no law at all) are considered in the dimensions of the legalism and natural law. The author concludes that the Radbruch formula is an exception to the saying «dura lex sed lex» (The law [is] harsh, but [it is] the law), which has undergone practical approbation. On the one hand, this resolution values the certainty and stability of the law, and on the other hand, it protects the person (society) from the unjustly shouting unjust laws.

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