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Law reform or legal reform is the process of examining existing , and advocating and implementing change in a legal system, usually with the aim of enhancing justice or efficiency.
Intimately related are law reform bodies or Law Commission, which are organizations set up to facilitate law reform. Law reform bodies carry out research and recommend ways to simplify and modernize the law. Many law reform bodies are statutory corporations set up by governments, although they are usually independent from government control, providing intellectual independence to accurately reflect and report on how the law should progress.
Law reform activities can include preparation and presentation of legal case in court in order to change the common law; lobbying of official in order to change legislation; and legal research or legal writing that helps to establish an empirical basis for other law reform activities.
The four main methods in reforming law are repeal (get rid of a law), creation of new law, consolidation (change existing law) and codification.
In the Law Reform Commission Act 1975, Ireland, the expression "reform" includes, in relation to the law or a branch of the law, its development, its codification (including in particular its simplification and modernisation), statute law revision and consolidation of statute law, and kindred words must be construed accordingly. Law Reform Commission Act, 1975 section 1
The budget of the judiciary in many transitional and developing countries is completely controlled by the executive. The latter undermines the separation of powers, as it creates a critical financial dependence of the judiciary. The proper national wealth distribution including the government spending on the judiciary is subject of the constitutional economics. It is important to distinguish between the two methods of corruption of the judiciary: the state (through budget planning and various privileges), and the private.Peter Barenboim, Defining the rules, The European Lawyer, Issue 90, October 2009
Valery Zorkin stressed that "the separation of powers principle, also proclaimed in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, requires observance of judicial independence. And such independence requires proper funding of the courts and their activities. It is well known that Russian courts remain under-funded. However, the cumulative economic costs suffered by both state and private enterprises as the result of under-performance by various judicial institutions, especially by the courts of general jurisdiction and the arbitration courts, is at least twice the order of magnitude as the financial burden carried by the state and society in financing such judicial institutions. The elimination of under-funding of the courts would definitely improve the efficiency of their work and be worthwhile.
Taking into account the specifics of historical developments in Russia, one may assert that without undertaking a large-scale legal reform it would be extremely difficult to succeed concurrently with judicial reform. It is necessary now to start unfolding a full-scale legal reform, which has to be completed by the year 2020. The official public presentation and implementation of such legal reform should become the prime responsibility of executive and legislative authorities. The program of legal reform needs to be adopted in the form of a legislative act.
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