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| LegalB's Engrossing Service |
Overview "Engrossing" is the process of producing a new, amended version of legislation from instructions contained in a piece of legislation that amends that legislation. Historically, clerks carried out engrossing of bills, and the printer often carried out the engrossing of legislation. As you can imagine, instructions to amend legislation have to be very clear, and have to be very strictly followed. If this is not the case, the amended legislation may not reflect the intentions of the legislature. Our mission . Our mission, in engrossing corrections and amendments to legislative texts, is consistently to apply those engrossing rules that would result in the development of amended versions of legislation that would best reflect the intention of the legislature, without us having to second-guess the intention of the legislature. . Our objective . Our objective, in undertaking the engrossing process, is to following strict engrossing rules for textual integrations and omissions, so that we can produce amended legislative texts that best reflect the law as it stands, word for word, letter by letter. We go to great lengths, in applying engrossing rules and changing the text of legislation as required by amending legislation, to ensure that we do not end up second-guessing the intention of the legislature or usurping the interpretive role of the courts by making amendment that are not included in the amending legislation. We feel that the intention of the legislature is the sole prerogative of the legislature to express, and that it is for the public and the courts to discern that intention by reading and interpreting legislation and its amendments. During engrossing, therefore, we neither look for nor sanitize mistakes, contradictions and other inconsistencies contained in amending or amended legislation, whether the legislature, the printers, or anyone else along the way caused these. Again, we feel that it is the prerogative of the legislature to identify and correct such mistakes, contradictions and inconsistencies as and when it wants, and it is for others in the mean time to overcome these as best they can. However, where we do happen to notice a proofreading problem, we may well footnote the relevant text with an Engrossor comment or by inserting [sic] to assist you to get a full picture of the legislation. . A note on engrossing and "unmarked amendments" Amending legislation will usually specify what font and/or formatting it will use to mark insertions and omissions it makes to legislation it amends. However, not infrequently, amending legislation will sometimes fail to mark an insertion or omission with the marks it defined. We refer to such amendments as "unmarked amendments", and we classify them either as an "unmarked insertion" or as an "unmarked omission". During engrossing, we take all unmarked amendments at their face value and assume them to be effected, and strict engrossing rules are therefore applied to them and they are incorporated as amendments into the amended text. However, because of the element of uncertainty caused by unmarked amendments, we let you know about each and every unmarked amendment we find. We do this by clearly highlighting and marking such texts as either [an unmarked insertion ] or [an unmarked omission]. We also insert an Engrossor's Note in the amended legislation, that tells you the text may be an unmarked insertion and/or unmarked omission, and an Engrossor's Comment in the amending legislation, that suggests you view the Engrossor Note contained in the amended legislation. A note on engrossing, unintended results and proofreading Occasionally, amendments will result in amended text that is inconsistent with accepted rules for spelling and grammar, or with other text in the amended legislation. Although such issues of inconsistency relate to proofreading rather than engrossing, if we happen to notice a possible inconsistency during the engrossing process we may well either insert an Engrossor's Comment or the textual notation [sic] to draw your attention to it. . The results . We are able to provide an updated, amended version of any piece of legislation to our clients, as soon as possible after amendments to it are effected, which contains text that best represents the law as it stands (warts and all, with all the loopholes and inconsistencies attendant to this). |
| LegalB's Legislation Update Services |
Our mission Our mission is to ensure we offer an easy to use, efficient and cost effective service that facilitate the building, maintenance and monitoring of legislative compliance and transgression knowledge bases relevant to South African legislation, by providing legislation information streams relevant to specific knowledge base being compiled, maintained or monitored. Our objective Our objective is provide our clients with a practical way to identify South African legislation and changes to legislation that are relevant to whatever compliance and transgression legislative knowledge base they are building, maintaining or monitoring. Accessing this service If you would like updates about legislation you have already identified as relevant to compliance and transgression programmes you are building, maintaining or monitoring, please EMAIL us the specific title, number and year of legislation you would like us to send you updates about, with a request that we keep you updated about that legislation. If you have not yet embarked on, or are still in the process of building a legislation compliance and transgression knowledge base, you are welcome to contact us by EMAIL or otherwise, and we'll see what we can do to assist: Much of the information you will need to begin building a thorough compliance and transgression knowledge base is freely available though our website (along with a site user guide to facilitate you accessing this information). Where the information is not available on our website, we may make the information available to you freely, or on a subscription or commission basis. Note to STAQ subscribers: If you subscribed to a LegalB STAQ to test for transgressions of legislation, we will forward free automatic updates about legislation relevant to that STAQ to the email address you used in subscribing to that STAQ. If, for reasons of confidentiality or otherwise, that email address is unmonitored, you should advise us of a correct email address to which legislative information should be sent in order to properly maintain your legislation compliance and transgression knowledge base. |
