4.1 General Principles

The craft defined: legislative drafting is the composition of laws — the conversion of policy into binding text; the discipline where precision, clarity and foreseeability must co-exist (the statute must command the present and anticipate the future). The principles' catalogue (the exam's list): Clarity: the ordinary reader (the judge, the administrator, the citizen) must understand the command — ambiguity is the draft's first defect (LAW 502's whole science exists because drafts fail here); Precision: exact meaning — the draft says what it means and means what it says; the defined term used consistently, the synonym avoided (the "one concept, one word" rule); Plain language: the modern movement — jargon and legalese rejected; the sentence short; the active voice; the arrangement logical (the citizen's right to understand the law that binds them); Prospectivity and certainty: the presumption against retrospectivity respected (LAW 502's presumption as the drafter's constraint — retrospective effect only if clearly commanded); Consistency and harmony: the new statute drafted to fit the existing corpus — the repeal expressly handled, the amendments identified, the conflicts foreseen and avoided (the harmonious construction assisted at the source); Gender-neutral drafting: the modern rule — the generic masculine avoided ("he or she", or the neutral reconstruction); Economy: no redundancy, no surplusage — but not at clarity's cost; Completeness: the gap analysis done — the…