Context
Mongolia is currently enjoying an economic upswing and is being restructured as a modern market economy. The development of an appropriate legal system is an important building block in this context. The Government must ensure that the legislation brings different political and private interests into harmony with market requirements. If standards and laws of high quality are to be introduced, the process of their establishment has to be based on recognised standards of law-making and enforcement. There is currently a lack of instruments and methods that place sectoral legal policies in a coordinated context in Mongolia.
Objective
The Ministry of Justice and other relevant ministries introduce methods, instruments and structures for modernising both the legislating process and the jurisdiction. Legal policy and justice policy provide a more precise guide for the institutional interplay between the market and policies. More effective processes have been established for creating and enforcing the legislation.
Approach
The project's task is to establish fundamental procedures within the Mongolian legal system to encourage the elaboration of standards, improve their quality, and thus make them more enforceable. The advice provided relates to the entire law-making process, with the objective of improving the legislative capabilities and the skills of institutions within the judicial system. The intermediaries are the managerial staff and other experts in the partner ministry, along with other players, in particular those at the Supreme Court and the State General Prosecutor’s Office as well as the courts of appeal and of first instance, the National Legal Centre and relevant professional associations.
New instruments and methods to improve the quality of the legislation and increase judicial efficiency and consistency are being developed and implemented. They undergo testing, after which they are made available to other organisations. These instruments and methods include aids on the subject of legal formality, which act as binding rules explaining the technical process of writing laws and a method for assessing the impacts of legislation – including cost calculation. This procedure is new in that economic, financial and social impacts of a piece of legislation can be examined and the legislator can gauge the effects of a law before it enters into force.
A new procedure for legal consolidation is being developed to eliminate duplications, contradictions and gaps in the legislation, as are monitoring and evaluation systems for the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs and the downstream authorities.
Results achieved so far
Legislation on drawing up standards which was drafted with support from the project was passed in May 2011. It enshrined in law the newly developed instruments and methods for improving the quality of legislation, which are therefore now binding on the Government.
A procedure for legal consolidation has been introduced. A total of 81 economic laws in the Mongolian Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs have been consolidated so far. In March 2010 the Mongolian Cabinet drew up a resolution providing a legal department for every ministry, whose principal mandate will be to consolidate all the laws within the respective ministry’s area of responsibility. To date more than 200 laws have been consolidated in the ministries. Four ministries have drafted pieces of framework legislation, two of which have been submitted to Parliament. The method of impact assessment for legislation has been drawn up and issued in the form of guidelines. The method is currently being implemented in the ministries.
The Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs is receiving support in developing and introducing system evaluations for organisations. Binding guidelines adapted to the needs of the judicial system have been issued by the state secretary and will also form the basis for system evaluations in other ministries.
Monitoring software developed with advisory input from the project is being tested at the State General Prosecutor’s Office and five other pilot institutions. The programme will be introduced at eleven additional state prosecutor’s offices by the end of 2012.
The State General Prosecutor’s Office of Mongolia has decided to set up service units and IT centres based on the German system. In December 2011 one was established at the authority to be responsible for IT security and the optimisation of work flows in state prosecutors’ offices.
Another result of the project’s advisory services is the decision by the General Council of Courts (2009) on a concept paper concerning the introduction of monitoring and modern management for the judicial system. It covered the introduction of specialist software supporting court proceedings in order to improve procedures, and the establishment of service units or modern public offices at the courts, which in the future will employ professionally trained court clerks as is the case in Germany. A job description is being compiled.
The paper envisages that the partner will develop and introduce this software for the criminal and administrative courts on its own.