 |
A Country has a central government, usually called the federal government, which controls and runs the country and has the power to pass laws that will apply within the entire country, it also has the power to pass laws which will only apply in specified areas of the country, which it sometimes but rarely does.
The Country is usually made up of highest level semi-independent sub-jurisdictions, which are geographical areas that are typically called provinces or states, however, they can also have other names; in this paper they are always referred to as provinces or states, but keep in mind that in the world they will sometimes have other names. Each province or state has its own government, normally called a provincial government or a state government, which can pass many of the laws that will apply in that province or state. The country's laws (passed by the federal government), unless specificed otherwise in the law, will also apply in all provinces and states. Therefore, laws that apply in a province or a state are the laws enacted (ie. passed) by that province or state and the laws passed by the federal government which apply to that province or state (the huge majority of federal laws apply equally in all provinces or states, but a very few federal laws apply only in specified areas). The federal laws and the provincial or state laws are not the only laws that will apply, there are also county and/or municipal by-laws, which will be discussed further below.
To repeat the above, the laws passed by a state or provincial government can only apply in the state or province that passed them, as a provincial or state government has no jurisdiction beyond its borders. The laws passed by the federal government apply to the whole country unless they were specifically passed to apply only in some areas of the country (which is very unusual but does sometimes happen). Therefore, in addition to being subject to the by-laws of the county and/or municipality in which a person lives, the person is also subject to the province or state laws of the province or state in which they live and to the laws that were passed by the federal government which apply to the whole country or to the specific provinces or states to which they apply.
No sub-jurisdiction below the level of province or state has inalienable power or authority. In other words, every jurisdiction below the level of province or state can have its law making powers added to or subtracted from by the jurisdiction immediately above it, as it is the jurisdiction immediately above a second or lower level sub-jurisdiction that gives or takes away law making powers from that sub-jurisdiction.
The power of the country to make laws always remains the same and cannot be taken away from the country by any entity and the powers of each state or province to make laws always remain the same and cannot be taken away by any entity.
Some states and provinces have counties as their highest level of sub-jurisdiction. A county would therefore be a sub-jurisdiction of the province or state within which it exists and a sub-sub-jurisdiction of the country within which it exists.
The sub-jurisdiction (ie. province or state) within which a county exists can give that county law making powers over (for example): public services (eg. water, sanitation); mental health systems; criminal prosecution; local jails; child protective services; foster care provision; property tax, sales taxes; public libraries; some aspects of public transportation; school districts; policing; firefighting; parks. The sub-jurisdiction (ie. province or state) within which a county exists can also take away from the country, or limit, any of the law making powers which it gave to that county.
If there is no county then the highest level sub-jurisdiction within a province or state (which will be a sub-sub-jurisdiction of the country) will be a municipality, city or town, and they can be given any of the aforesaid powers that could have been given to a county.
If there is a county which was not given any law making powers then even though a city, town or municipality in that county will technically be a sub-sub-sub-jurisdiction of the country, it will be given some or all of the aforesaid powers that could have been given to a county and in reality will have powers as if it was a sub-sub-jurisdiction.
|
Even when there are counties within which a city or town exists, it will usually be the city or town, not the county, that has power over (for example): housing; buildings; municipal planning (including streets, sidewalks, parking, public area lighting); zoning; local public transportation.
Cities, towns and municipalities are therefore either a sub-sub-sub- jurisdiction of a country (ie. below the country, below the province or state and below the county), or if there is no county with law making powers over them, then a sub-sub-jurisdiction of a country (ie. below the country and below the province or state).
The people in every city, town, or municipality are therefore subject to four or three sets of laws: (i) the country's laws, (ii) the province or state laws, (iii) the county laws and (iv) the city, town or municipality laws, or if there is no county or it has no law making powers, then to: (i) the country's laws, (ii) the province or state laws, and (iii) the city, town or municipality laws.
The highest level and second highest level governments, the federal government and the provincial or state government, make laws by passing what is called legislation, each piece of legislation is called an "Act", when an Act is passed it becomes a law on the date that it comes into force. Acts are often passed to come into force at a date after the date on which they were passed.
If the Act was passed by the federal government then it becomes a law for the whole country and applies equally in every part of the country; rarely, but sometimes, an Act is passed by the federal government which applies to only specific parts of the country, when that happens it will say so in the Act.
If the Act was passed by a state or provincial government then it becomes a law only for the state or province that passed it, and it applies no-where else in the country; rarely, but sometimes, an Act that is passed by a provincial or state government will apply to only specific parts of the state or province that passed it, when that happens it will say so in the Act.
Counties, cities, towns and municipalities, make laws by passing what are called bylaws (sometimes spelt with a hyphen as by-laws), or sometimes called ordinances; bylaws, by-laws and ordinances are the same thing and will hereinafter be referred to as bylaws. Legally bylaws are not the same as Acts, in practice they have much the same affect on the lives of the people as do Acts. Once again, federal or country governments and provincial or state and equal level governments pass "Acts" which become the law in the jurisdiction that passed them (unless they list exceptions in them), counties, cities, towns and municipalities pass bylaws that are not the same thing as a law created by an Act, but which in practice are the same as a law in the jurisdiction that passed them unless they list exceptions in them.
|
Many Acts do not state the specifics of how they are to be followed, that is where rules come in. Regarding laws, rules and regulations mean the same thing, hereinafter rules and regulations will simply be referred to as Rules.
(I am not referring to bylaws, I am referring to Acts, bylaws will be discussed later in this paper; what is written below refers only to Acts, when I am again referring to bylaws that will be stated.)
Regarding the statement that many Acts do not state the specifics of how they are to be followed, for example, the Patent Act states under what circumstances a person is entitled to get a patent, but it does not state the specifics of how a person can apply for a patent, what fees the person will have to pay or what the Patent Office will do in the course of deciding whether or not to grant the patent, the Patent Rules fill in the missing pieces.
The Act will state what types of Rules can be made under the authority of the Act. For example, the Patent Rules, made under the authority of the Patent Act, can only govern what the Patent Act allows them to govern, if they were to encompass things which the Patent Act did not state they could encompass then to that extent they are subject to being found to be invalid by a court (if someone spends the money and time to challenge them in court). If not challenged in court and over turned by the court, then Rules that encompass things they are not legally entitled to encompass will continue to encompass and control those things, even though legally they are not entitled to do so.
The point is that an illegally made Rule remains in effect until it is over turned by a court, and that will only happen if someone spends the time and money to challenge it in court and the court over turns it. The same applies to Acts which make laws that they were not legally entitled to make (ie. they make laws that are unconstitutional or outside of the level of authority of the jurisdiction that passed them); such illegal laws will remain in force and effect unless someone spends the time and money to challenge them in court and the court over turns them. If an illegal Rule or Act is challenged in court and the court does not over turn it, then it remains in force and effect and continues to be a governing law or Rule even though it is illegal.
|
The commissions, boards, committees, etc., usually appoint people to act on their behalf, in which case it is the appointed people who determine if the Act or Rule (depending of what the Board, Commission or Committee was set up to determine) were followed, which in turn determines if the public gets what the Act and/or Rules stated the public would get if they were followed, or what penalty the public would get if the Act and/or Rules were not followed.
The point is that there can be many people with decision making authority between the law (ie. the Act) and the population, and it is those in between people who will determine which members of the population get what the Act (ie. the law) or Rules stated. In some cases a person who feels that they did not get what they were entitled to get, or that they were wrongly given a penalty, can go to court to have a judge decide the matter, however, that is very expensive and can take many years, therefore, court is out of reach of most people, hence most people are at the mercy of the people who are in between them and what the law states.
In some situations the Act (ie. the law) forbids people from going to court even if they feel that they were not treated as required by the law, in those cases the law usually sets out a Board or Tribunal or other non-court entity to which a person can go if they feel aggrieved. Whether or not those Boards or Tribunals, etc. actually provide a legitimate avenue of appeal is not a question that can be answered in general, in my experience some Boards, Tribunals, etc, provide a legitimate avenue of appeal, others are a rubber stamp supporting the administrative decision the aggrieved person is appealing, which only adds insult to injury.
|
Bylaws are sometimes called by-laws or ordinances, all three (bylaw, by-law, ordinance) mean the same thing. Bylaws cannot be laws because the authority to pass Acts (ie. laws) is only given to the country's government and to the governments of states, provinces and equal level sub-jurisdictions of a country; therefore, a county or a city or a town or a municipality cannot pass an Act (ie make a law) as they do not have the authority to pass Acts. Bylaws are like rules because the authority to create them comes from an Act; bylaws are passed by sub-jurisdictions below the level of province or state.
The people who run the provinces or states decided that many of the day to day aspects of where a person lives, which they were responsible for determining, should be area specific, and therefore be decided by the governments of the county or city or town or municipality in which the person lives; most likely that decision was made to save the people who run the provinces and states the huge amount of extra work it would be if they had to make those decisions. In any event, the people who run the provinces or states (provincial or state governments) delegated that work to the counties (if there are counties) and to the municipalities, towns and cities; they did it by passing Acts (ie. laws) which gave the power to the local government of the counties (if they exist) and of the cities, towns and municipalities, to make what are similar to laws, and even more similar to rules, governing day to day life in the county, city, town and municipality; but they couldn't give them the power to pass Acts as the Constitution or Agreement which created the country (if there is no Constitution) forbade such a transfer of power, so instead the provincial and state governments gave the local governments of the counties (if they exist) and of the cities, towns and municipalities the power to make (essentially) rules that have some characteristics of laws, governing the day to day aspects of life, but they didn't want to call what the county (if they exist), municipal, town and city governments made, Rules or Regulations, because they are not exactly like what is usually called a Rule or Regulation (in law Rule and Regulation means the same thing) so they called them bylaws (and in some places they called them ordinances, which means the same thing as bylaws).
An Act (ie. a law) is passed by a primary jurisdiction (ie. a country) or a 1st level sub-jurisdiction; no sub-jurisdiction below a 1st level sub-jurisdiction has the authority to pass an Act. An Act can give jurisdictions below a 1st level sub-jurisdiction the authority to pass a bylaw which will have legal authority over the subject matter covered by the bylaw if the Act which allowed for the creation of the bylaw gave the 2nd or lower level sub-jurisdiction which passed the bylaw the authority over that subject matter, unless the constitution or the agreement which created the country (if there is no constitution) did not give authority over the subject matter covered by the bylaw to the jurisdiction which passed the Act, or forbade the jurisdiction which passed the Act from delegating out that authority. In other words, a bylaw will be just as effective at controlling that which it covers as an Act would be as long as: (i) the jurisdiction which passed the Act (which allowed for the creation of the bylaw) had jurisdiction over the subject matter covered by the bylaw, and (ii) the Act which allowed for the making of the bylaw allowed the subject matter covered by the bylaw to be delegated out.
The bottom line is that a bylaw (ordinance) made by the local county, city, town or municipal government has legal authority over the people who live in that county, city, town or municipality. If you challenge a bylaw in court the fact that it is a bylaw will allow for more legal points of attack than if it was an Act or Rule, but if you are not challenging a bylaw in court it will have the same affect on you as an Act or Rule.
Bylaws typically cover things like: child protective services; foster care provision; property tax; public libraries; some aspects of public transportation; school districts; policing; firefighting; local parks; housing zoning; building zoning; municipal planning (including over streets, sidewalks, parking, and public area lighting); water, to name a few.
|
|
