The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan empowers the federal and provincial Governments via the President and the Governors of the respective provinces to enact the primary legislation independent of the representative legislatures in the form of Ordinances. However, the resulting enactment remains in force for a few months, and notionally, must be promulgated only under the circumstances of urgent necessity and when the national legislature is not in session. Yet, owing to the vagueness of the text of the relevant Constitutional provisions, the scope of this legislative authority has much potential for abuse, and it has so been alleged too, in numerous Constitutional petitions filed from time to time in the superior courts of Pakistan seeking the judicial review of the promulgating action on the ground of malafide etc. But the judicature in Pakistan has largely abstained from exercising its authority to keep itself from being stigmatized from the usual aftermath of the judicial pronouncement on questions of political fiat. Resultantly, the natural democratic right of the illiterate and ignorant people of Pakistan to be governed by laws made by the designated representative legislature is persistently being jeopardized. In this view of the matter, on the basis of an empirical study of the Ordinance and the emergency legislation in the United Kingdom, and the ensuing principles of good governance and democratic norms, this article argues that the Constitutional authority of the Governments in Pakistan to enact primary legislation by way of promulgating Ordinances is an arbitrary legislative endowment, and entails a review by a truly representative, legitimate and competent Constituent Assembly.

Legislative drafting is a skill slowly developing in the Pacific today. This abstract identifies and records an update on the challenges to legislative drafting in Pacific island countries. Due to lack of information on legislative drafting in the Pacific, research was undertaken with the assistance of Parliamentary Counsel and other Pacific drafters. I also attended the second biennial meeting of the Pacific Drafters’ Technical Forum in October 2009 where more current challenges were discussed. My own experiences as a legislative drafter are also reflected in this abstract.
The outcomes of the abstract will show that whereas legislative drafting as a specialised skill is recognised by Pacific governments and interests have grown in pursuing legislative drafting as a career, the challenges faced by Pacific legislative drafters are commonly more diverse and complex. In addition to analysing some of these challenges, this paper offers some recommendations to combating them.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as seen by observers, resembles a greedy international cartel that preys on the public in defiance of market competition. High oil prices are considered as a principal cause of the US economic woes. Some US congressmen pinpointed OPEC’s alleged inconsistency with the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and called upon the US administration to open dispute settlement proceedings against OPEC. This article discusses the legal issues arising from a US action at the WTO level against OPEC countries. The first sections of the article comprise an institutional review of the WTO and OPEC. The article addresses the interplay between the WTO and OPEC. It then illustrates the central provisions of the WTO that can be used for arguments and counter-arguments concerning such a WTO action. It culminates with a set of concluding thoughts.