Law Commission of India - Working of The Law Commission

Working of The Law Commission

The Law Commission works in close co-ordination and under the general instruction of Ministry of Law and Justice. It generally acts as the initiation point for law reform in the country. Internally, the Law Commission works in a research-oriented manner. Employing a number of research analysts (and even law students from 2007), the Commission works upon the assigned agenda and primarily comes up with research based reports, often conclusive and recommendatory. The permanent members of the Commission generally are responsible for framing the exact topic and reference to work upon and often takes the services of eminent law experts and jurists who are familiar with the matter under review. These experts may either work part-time with the Commission or may have been requested to contribute to specific reports or issues under review.

According to the Commission's website, the Commission's regular staff consists of about a dozen research personnel of different ranks and varied experiences with a small group of secretarial staff looks after the administration side of the Commission's operations and the internal functioning of the Commission can be described as a process with the following stages;

• Initiation of projects at the Commission's meetings;
• Discussion of priorities; identification of topics and assignment of preparatory work to Members;
• Adoption of methodologies for collection of data and research;
• Outlining of problems and determination of areas for reform;
• Consultations with public, professional bodies and academic institutions;
• Evaluation of responses and preparation of draft of report;
• Discussion and scrutiny of report, leading to its finalization; and
• Forwarding of report to the Ministry of Law and Justice.

Once the Report is submitted to the Ministry of Law and Justice, the task of the Commission ends unless it is required to rework upon identified areas of provide clarifications by the Government on the report submitted. Upon receipt of the Report, it is the responsible for follow-up action on the recommendations made by the Commission in the Report. Generally the Ministry of Law and Justice forwards the Report with its remarks to other relevant Ministries in the Government of India and seeks from them their opinion on the relevance of the recommendation and finalizes with them the manner of implemendation of these recommendations. When the proposals are cleared by the various Ministries and approved by the Cabinet, the Ministry of Law and Justice goes for drafting of the implementing legislation or follows the draft submitted by the Law Commission (which usually is the case) and presents the same for approval before the Parliament.