What Does Codification Mean?
An introduction to codification, consolidation and why organised legal texts matter for access to law.
Making the law easier to identify and use
Codification is part of the process of organising laws into a coherent and accessible body of legal material. It can involve bringing related laws together, removing inconsistencies, updating references and ensuring that amendments are properly reflected.
Consolidation generally brings legal provisions and amendments together into a clearer text without necessarily changing the underlying policy.
Why it matters
When laws are scattered across many enactments or have been amended repeatedly, citizens, institutions, lawyers and courts can find it difficult to determine what the current law says.
The Law Reform Commission's statutory mandate expressly includes unification, codification, elimination of anomalies, repeal of obsolete enactments and simplification and modernisation of the law.
Codification and law reform therefore support both legal certainty and public access to justice.