Organic law

An organic or fundamental law is a law or system of laws which forms the foundation of a government, corporation or other organization's body of rules. A constitution is a particular form of organic law for a sovereign state.

Organic laws of the United States

Main article: Organic Act

The U.S. Code (2007)^[1] defines the organic laws of the United States to include the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, and the U.S. Constitution^[2][3].

Organic laws in France

Under the current Constitution of France, organic laws are a short, fixed list of statutes (as of 2005, there are about 30 of them), whose existence is provisioned by the text of the Constitution itself. Those special statutes are of constitutional scope according to the framing of the French Constitution (especially its preambles), and also have constitutional force. This means that they overrule ordinary statutes, despite their being enacted by the Parliament of France in the same way — except that the Constitutional Council of France is unconditionally consulted before any organic law is enacted.

This mechanism allows the French Constitution to provide flexibility where needed. Dispositions such as the legislative process for enacting the budgets of the French state and French social security, as well as the practical procedures for the various elections, are delegated to organic laws, which tends to make the constitution itself less prone to change.

An important category of organic laws are budget system laws.

Organic laws in Spain

Main article: Organic Law (Spain)

Under the current Spanish Constitution of 1978, an Organic Law has an intermediate status between that of an ordinary law and of the constitution itself. It must be passed by a majority of the Congress of Deputies. The Spanish Constitution specifies that some areas of law should be regulated by this procedure, such as the Laws of Development of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms contained in the first section of Chapter Two of Title I of the Constitution, which was the basis for the Statutes of Autonomy of the various autonomous communities of Spain. Prior to the 1978 constitution this concept had no precedent in Spain, but was inspired by the similar concept in the current French Constitution of 1958.

References

1. ^ 2007 U.S. Code
2. ^ U.S. Code
3. ^ 2007 Publication of the U.S. Code including the organic laws

• http://edstudents.angelfire.com/papers/ORGANIC_LAW.pdf
• Drafting Budget System Laws -- IMF Technical Guidance Note, Ian Lienert and Israel Fainboim, IMF, 2007

See also

• Basic Law
• Organic statute
• Fundamental Law
• Organic Laws of Oregon