1) Sources and Types of Law Flashcards
What are the main divisions of law?
- Statute law
- Civil law
What is Statute law?
A law that’s come about by going
through Parliament.
What are the three types of statute law?
- criminal law
- administrative law
- professional law
Explain criminal law?
- Concerned with the relationship between individual and the state.
- There will be an agency (the police) whose task it is to prevent and investigate
and detect crime and they will be prosecuting the offenders in a medium, so the courts. - There are methods by which to convict defendants as well, so the punishment, which may be through sending them to jail.
Examples of some aspects of criminal law do have a direct bearing on pharmacy practice.
Requirement of prescription only medicines, they can only be sold, supplied in
accordance with a prescription given by a prescriber. Now, violation of this requirement amounts to a
criminal offence.
Explain administrative law?
- regulates the activities of public bodies e.g the NHS. So where the NHS has a contract with a community pharmacy, the administrative law will be regulating those activities.
Explain professional law?
- Underpins the powers of professional regulatory
bodies. So in the world of pharmacy, that’s the General Pharmaceutical Council. - This is the law
that underpins the power to discipline professionals. - So powers are granted to regulators through statutes.
The Pharmacy Order of 2010 and its associated rules of those that applied by the General Pharmaceutical
Council. Now, for health professionals, there’s a general idea that we have an expected standard of care. Now
this is used by professional tribunals to judge whether a professional is guilty of misconduct.
What is civil law?
- Concerned with relationships between individuals and relates
to the conduct of human relationship - Recognises individual and collective civil rights, which regulates relationships between individuals
- Protects and enforces these rights by allowing individual
members of society who feel that one of their rights have been infringed to sue the other individual who is believed to have infringed that right.
What is the major difference between criminal law and civil law?
- The state takes no active part on behalf of individual members of society in civil law actions and it does have a direct involvement in the development of the laws which embody the individual civil rights
- Also provides the
methods in the system, so the judges and the courts, et cetera, where individuals can enforce their specific
rights. - It’s important to remember the same set of facts can give rise to both criminal and civil actions.
-For example, a pharmacist employer who fails to maintain the set of steps which results in an injury to an
employee may be sued in the civil court by the employee and prosecuted in the criminal court for failing to
ensure the health and safety and welfare of their employees.
So where do all these laws come from? So there’s four main sources of law:
- primary legislation
- secondary legislation
- judicial precedent
- European Union Law
What is the legislation?
- Each law has a foundation of some kind. In the UK, the rules in the legal system have their foundation in acts performed by Parliament, and they’re written down as a matter of public record. They’re known as the legislation.
Primary legislation?
- Primary legislation is essentially what we
know as Acts of Parliaments, which are created through a formal procedure.
What three elements is Parliament comprised of?
- The first one is the House of Commons. That’s an elected body of individuals, and the political party with the most seats forms the government. As the name suggests, the role of the government
is to govern the country, a role it achieves through a large number of government departments, each
headed by a government minister. The government has the greatest influence over lawmaking or
legislative process. - The House of Lords, the members of this house have not been elected. They’re either hereditary, which nowadays is very few, or they’ve been appointed. Now, the role of the peers, which is a term that’s used, is to participate in the government and to contribute to the lawmaking work of the
Commons. They participate in debates and in committees. - And the last elements of Parliament is the monarch, so the Queen. And the role of the monarch in lawmaking is now purely ceremonial. The Queen will open up each parliamentary session, the formal state opening of the Parliament. As part of the ceremony, she will make a speech, so that’s known as
the Queen’s speech. And that details the legislation Parliament intends to enact during the following
session. The speech is written by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Queen has no control over its content.
How does legislation come about?
- As proposals from cabinet ministers, either on a
suggestion from government advisors or result of a commitment to make new laws in an election manifesto. - What can happen is a green paper is published by a government department and it sets out the government’s views on an issue and asks for public comment.
- The next step is a white paper is produced based on the comments from the green paper consultations. The white paper puts forward firm
proposal, but it does leave room for minor changes. - If agreement is reached, the proposals are drafted
into a document called a bill, and they begin their formal passage through Parliament. Now, in the House
of Commons, the bill will go through five stages.
1. The first stage, which is the first reading. That’s a formality, generally introducing that the bill is there
and setting a date for a second reading.
Now, the second reading, the minister responsible for the instruction of the bill will formally propose its
adoption.
2. Then there’ll be a full debate on the merits of the bill and a vote by all MPs present.
3. The third stage, which is the most crucial, the committee stage, is the most important stage. The bill is
considered word-for-word, clause by clause by a committee of about 25 to 45 MPs. Any significant
amendments required can be proposed and adopted at this stage.
4. Then we’ve got the fourth stage, the report stage. The committee report its finding to the full House of
Commons. A debate will take place and further amendments can be suggested, and a vote will be taken
on the merits of the bill.
5. In the fifth stage, which is the third reading, a generally short debate takes place, but generally only a
few significant amendments will be introduced.
Now, the passage of a bill through any stage can take a considerable amount of time or it can be quite
rapid.
For example, we take the medicines bill, which is now known as the Medicines Act 1968. Well, the
first reading, that took five minutes, so introducing it took five minutes. The second reading took five and
a half hours. The committee stage, the most crucial stage, had to take place over 20 meetings on an
average of 2.5 hours per meeting. So that was a considerably lengthy process. The reporting stage took
about two and a half hours. And the third reading took one minute. So it’s very variable as to how quick
the process is. And then after it’s gone through the House of Commons, it has to go through the same
five stages in the House of Lords. The House of Lords, they can introduce significant amendments, but
they can’t delay any non-financial bill for more than one year. Again, it can take varying amounts of time.
So again, concerning the medicines bill, we’ve got one minute for the first reading, one and a half hours
for the second reading, two and a half hours for the committee stage. The reporting stage took about two
hours. And third reading took, again, one minute. Then it has to go to the monarch. Once it’s received
royal assent, then it can become an act of Parliament. So the medicine bill was given the royal assent on
the 25th of October, 1968, hence why it’s called Medicines Act 1968.
