"General review of legal documents to handle overlaps and conflicts"

(Dan Tri) - Head of the Central Internal Affairs Committee Phan Dinh Trac proposed conducting a general review of legal documents to handle overlapping, contradictory, and inadequacies of the current legal system.

On November 1, the Central Committee for Internal Affairs coordinated with the Ministry of Justice and the National Assembly's Committee on Law and Justice to organize a national scientific workshop on "Improving the structure of Vietnam's legal system to meet the country's development requirements in the new era".

The draft project, chaired by the Ministry of Justice, includes three main parts: General issues on the structure of the legal system; Assessment of the current status of the Vietnamese legal system; Viewpoints, goals, and solutions to perfect the legal structure for the 2026-2031 period and the following periods.

The national scientific conference was organized by the Ministry of Justice in coordination with the Central Internal Affairs Committee and the National Assembly's Committee on Law and Justice on November 1 (Photo: Phuong Mai).

Deputy Prime Minister Le Thanh Long assessed this as an important event, contributing to clarifying theoretical aspects, identifying practices, and referring to international experience to realize the goal of making institutions and laws a competitive advantage, playing a leading role in national development.

Over the past years, the Party and State have always paid special attention to the work of building and perfecting institutions and laws, identifying this as one of the three strategic breakthroughs. Therefore, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, it is necessary to determine specific directions, solutions, and roadmaps to perfect the structure of Vietnam's legal system.

This aims to overcome limitations and shortcomings, and build a more complete legal system structure so that the State and its subjects can properly promote their roles, positions, and responsibilities in the country's development process.

AI will point out the problem, legal overlap cannot happen

Former Minister of Justice Ha Hung Cuong affirmed that Vietnam’s legal system is among the most complex in the world. He suggested building a project “from simple to complex”. At the same time, it is necessary to review the national legal system, retaining only about 1,000 laws and decrees.

“The law is naturally effective, without having to wait for instructions. The Land Law was recently issued and received applause from the people, but I have a friend in Hanoi who has not been able to get a red book for 20 years, although according to the law, of course he is entitled to it. This cannot be allowed to continue,” Mr. Cuong worried.

Dr. Nguyen Si Dung, former Deputy Head of the National Assembly Office, frankly proposed applying artificial intelligence (AI) to the project implementation, converting the current legal document system to machine-readable.

Dr. Nguyen Si Dung speaks at the conference (Photo: Phuong Mai).

“Times are different now. Singapore and Europe have already converted laws into machine-readable form. AI will compare our laws with international laws. When machines can read the laws, it will take 1 minute and 30 seconds for people to understand the legal system,” Dr. Dung said.

Commenting that laws are now written in PDF and Word formats, which cannot be read by machines, Mr. Dung recommended the need for data experts and other supporting tools.

“If the law is transferred to a machine-readable system, AI will point out the problem in 30 seconds, and legal overlap cannot happen,” Mr. Dung suggested.

Shifting from managerial legal thinking to constructive legal thinking

Mr. Phan Dinh Trac, Politburo member, Party Central Committee Secretary, Head of the Central Internal Affairs Committee, summarized the comments at the workshop as basically agreeing that the current legal system structure of Vietnam has 4 outstanding characteristics.

Firstly, the structure of the Vietnamese legal system is basically built on written law, codes, and laws are the main and most important source.

Second, the number of documents has grown rapidly but the quality is uneven.

Third, the structure of the legal system is complex, with many levels and the external structure of the legal system is quite complicated with many documents, making it difficult to look up and apply, and is one of the main causes of overlap and contradiction.

Fourth, in the process of strong transformation, the structure of the legal system is constantly moving and improving to meet the requirements of practice. The gradual enhancement of the role of precedents and other judicial mechanisms shows the trend of combining reasonable elements of legal systems and different legal systems in the world.

Head of the Central Internal Affairs Commission Phan Dinh Trac gave a speech at the workshop (Photo: Phuong Mai).

Some new areas such as digital assets, artificial intelligence (AI), personal data, etc. do not have any laws to regulate them and the National Assembly is currently discussing these laws.

From that, Mr. Phan Dinh Trac said that it is necessary to focus on perfecting the legal system structure in the direction of shifting from management legal thinking to creative law. The law does not only focus on controlling risks but also needs to guide, create opportunities, encourage innovation while still ensuring order and discipline.

In addition, it is necessary to focus on reviewing, systematizing, cutting down intermediate levels, eliminating overlaps and conflicts between regulations, moving towards a streamlined, unified, transparent and easy-to-implement legal system.

Comprehensively innovate the law-making process in a scientific and transparent direction, preventing group and local interests in policy-making.

Research and perfect the structure of the legal system in the direction of taking the Constitution and a number of core laws such as the Civil Code, the Penal Code, the Law on Handling of Administrative Violations, the Civil Procedure Code, the Administrative Procedure Law... as the center.

Mr. Phan Dinh Trac proposed to conduct a general review of legal documents to handle overlapping, contradictory and inadequacies of the current legal system.

Finally, the Head of the Central Internal Affairs Committee requested the Ministry of Justice, the National Assembly's Committee on Law and Justice and relevant agencies to continue researching, filtering, and absorbing opinions to better study and perfect the project.

The draft Project "Perfecting the structure of Vietnam's legal system to meet the requirements of national development in the new era" will be completed and submitted to the Central Steering Committee on perfecting institutions and laws next December.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/thoi-su/tong-ra-soat-van-ban-quy-pham-phap-luat-de-xu-ly-chong-cheo-mau-thuan-20251101162552217.htm