Perfecting the structure of Vietnam's legal system in a streamlined direction

Minister of Justice Nguyen Hai Ninh chaired the meeting.

Speaking at the meeting, Minister Nguyen Hai Ninh emphasized that this is a "difficult and large" project, which for the first time approaches the review and assessment of the legal system structure at a comprehensive level to prepare for the development of a strategy to build and perfect the legal system in the coming time.

The Minister requested delegates and experts to closely follow some key contents when giving comments on the draft Project, carefully consider whether the structure, design and presentation of the Project meets the requirements of the Project report to the Politburo or not.

Along with that, continue to review whether the assessment of the current situation is complete, especially the difficulties and inadequacies in perfecting the content structure, formal structure and the guarantee and operation mechanisms of the current legal system. Propose strategic solutions that are fundamental and capable of creating breakthrough changes when approved and implemented synchronously.

Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Ngo Trung Thanh, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee on Law and Justice , suggested that the draft Project should not only stop at listing current laws and proposing new laws, but also consider restructuring options for existing documents: which laws can, or even need to, be split into many specialized laws; which laws can be merged to avoid the proliferation of too many separate, overlapping, and conflicting laws, especially in areas such as digital transformation, cybersecurity, and digital data.

According to Mr. Thanh, the content that needs to be adjusted must be clearly defined and fully covered, but the names of the draft laws should be designed to be open enough, avoiding being too rigid, so that later there will still be room for flexibility in deciding on one or more laws to regulate the same group of issues.

Regarding the content of “developmental construction”, this expert believes that the Project needs to clearly define what is a constructive norm, and what fields and relationships it applies to. In particular, the sandbox testing mechanism must be tightly designed, only applied to new, rapidly changing fields, and cannot be applied arbitrarily, especially in sensitive fields, to avoid causing serious consequences.

Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Deputy Secretary General, Head of the Legal Department of the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry, said that the Project needs to clarify the principle of classifying documents according to the importance of each content.

“For example, the right to do business – a right recognized by the Constitution but for many years has only been regulated by Decree, especially for the household and individual business sector, which accounts for about 30% of GDP. Such core issues, in my opinion, must be regulated at the law level because the law has higher authority and a stricter construction process,” said Mr. Tuan.

Concluding the meeting, the Minister of Justice emphasized that the list of laws that need to be promulgated is very important, must be established annually and will be included in the appendix of the Political Report.

The Minister suggested continuing to clarify the structure of the legal system in a more streamlined direction. The Constitution remains the highest level; below that are international laws and treaties; followed by sub-legal documents of the central and local governments; and a level for precedents, customs, and sources of “soft law”...

At the same time, it is necessary to clarify the principle of the relationship between general law and specialized law in the direction that specialized law must be consistent with the basic principles in the core and foundational laws, but when implementing in detail, specialized law is given priority.

The Minister also noted that not all vacant fields require the issuance of legal documents, especially in the context of expanding legal sources; the order of application must be clearly defined, including written law, case law, customs, etc.

HUONG NGUYEN

Source: https://nhandan.vn/hoan-thien-cau-truc-he-thong-phap-luat-viet-nam-theo-huong-tinh-gon-post924673.html