Research on Legislative Clarity

Abstract

The principle of legislative clarity is first proposed by the newly amended Legislation Law of the People's Republic of China. The concept of legislative clarity has two connotations: the readability of legal texts and the determinacy of legal regulations. However, the readability of legal texts may not accurately convey the intention of laws and it is difficult to achieve the foresee ability in law. A debate over the existence of legal determinacy was triggered between Harter and Dworkin, which fully reveals the possibility of legal indeterminacy. It could be seen that legal determinacy is not an absolute standard of the quality of legislation. How to achieve the principle of relative clarity is a specific technical problem of legislation.