Manual on Plain Language Drafting
How to draft laws in plain language
Summary: This manual provides guidelines and illustrations regarding legislative drafting, both in relation with general language and structuring as well as the phrasing of specific kinds of commonly used provisions.
Indian laws have often been criticised for poor drafting, which makes them difficult to read. There is over-reliance on archaic drafting elements such as provisos, notwithstanding clauses, gendered and non-inclusive terms, and the use of foreign terms. Complex legal drafting goes against the grain of a democratic and participatory society as it reduces accessibility of the law to the common man.
With the object of making laws simple and accessible to all, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy engineered this manual for plain language drafting. The first part of the report provides crisp guidelines on how best to structure a law (the order of chapters and clauses, structural elements of preliminary clauses, definitions etc.), and how it can be streamlined and simplified. The second part of the report sets out guidelines on language, including the use of foreign words, grammar, and sentence construction.
Finally, in order to demonstrate how a law can be simplified, the report applies these principles to redraft and an existing law. With this report, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy hopes to act as a springboard from which the much-needed journey towards simpler legal drafting can begin in India.
Filed Under
About the Authors
Arghya is the Founder and Research Director at Vidhi. His areas of specialisation are constitutional law and regulation of the digital economy. He has served on a number of government committees including the B.N. Srikrishna-led committee of experts on a data protection framework for India. Arghya has a number of academic publications on the Supreme Court and the Constitution in leading law journals such as Law Quarterly Review and Public Law. He is also a columnist at The Telegraph and The Times of India. He has most recently authored a book “Independence and Accountability of the Indian Higher Judiciary” (Cambridge, 2019) which builds on his doctoral work at Oxford University. Prior to founding Vidhi, he was at Oxford as a Lecturer in Administrative Law at Pembroke College.
Namrata is a Senior Resident Fellow in the Legal Design and Regulation Vertical at Vidhi. She primarily handles engaged and commissioned projects from various ministries, statutory authorities and regulators by providing legal research and legislative drafting support. At Vidhi, she has worked with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Department of Consumer Affairs. Namrata also works extensively on queer rights and has initiated and worked on numerous projects on rights of gender and sexual minorities. She has written for the Hindu, the Firstpost, the Economic Times, the Leaflet, Article 14, Indian Express and Varta GenSex Policy Matters. Prior to Vidhi, Namrata taught at the Jindal Global Law School and the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (‘NUJS’), worked with the Migration and Asylum Project on labour laws and policy, the Centre for Popular Democracy in New York City, and the Public Law and Vidhi Aid verticals at Vidhi. She has a BA/LLB from NUJS and a LLM from Columbia Law which she attended in the capacity of a Human Rights Fellow
Ritwika is a Senior Resident Fellow and Lead at Charkha, Vidhi’s Constitutional Law Centre. Her current research is focused on comparative federalism, local governments, and electoral reforms. From 2014-17, Ritwika was a Research Fellow in the Public Law vertical at Vidhi. She advised several departments and regulatory authorities under the Government of India, on questions concerning constitutional validity of proposed legislation, legislative competence of the Union and states, and contours of the powers and functions of regulators. Ritwika also assisted the Union of India in preparing its written submissions in the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Case. Between 2019-2020, Ritwika worked as a Research Associate at DAKSH, Bengaluru. She obtained her LL.M. from the University of Cambridge in 2018. She graduated with a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.)) from the Indraprastha University, Delhi in 2013, and the LL.M. from the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad in 2014. Ritwika is the co-editor of “Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court of India: Transparency, Accountability and Independence” (Oxford University Press, 2018), a volume of essays addressing the politics, doctrine, and crucial developments pertaining to judicial appointments in India.
