An organic law is a law, or system of laws, that form the foundation of a

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government i ...

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

or any other organization's body of rules. A

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these pr ...

is a particular form of organic law for a sovereign state.

By country

France

Under Article 46 of the Constitution of France, organic laws (in French, ''lois organiques''; in English sometimes translated as Institutional Acts) are a short, fixed list of statutes (in 2005, there were about 30 of them) specified in the Constitution. They overrule ordinary statutes. They must be properly enacted by the Parliament of France following a special procedure and must be approved for constitutionality by the Constitutional Council of France before they can be promulgated. Organic laws allow flexibility if needed. An important category of organic laws includes the budgets of the French state and French

social security Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

. Other organic laws give the practical procedures for various

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...

s. Organic laws reduce the need for amendments to the constitution.

Hong Kong

The Basic Law of Hong Kong is a national law of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

that serves as the organic law for the

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta ...

(HKSAR). Comprising nine chapters, 160 articles and three annexes, the Basic Law was composed to implement

Annex I As of June 2013, there are 192 parties to the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which aims to combat global warming. This total includes 191 states (189 United Nations member states as well as the Coo ...

of the 1994 Sino-British Joint Declaration. The Basic Law was enacted under the Constitution of China when it was adopted by the

National People's Congress The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (NPC; ), or simply the National People's Congress, is constitutionally the supreme state authority and the national legislature of the People's Republic of China. With 2,9 ...

on 4 April 1990 and came into effect on 1 July 1997 when Hong Kong was transferred from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

to China. It replaced Hong Kong's colonial constitution of the

Letters Patent Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, tit ...

and the

Royal Instructions Royal instructions are formal instructions issued to governors of the United Kingdom's colonial dependencies, and past instructions can be of continuing constitutional significance in a former colonial dependency or Dominion. Content Traditiona ...

. The Basic Law lays out the basic policies of China on Hong Kong until 2047, including the "

one country, two systems "One country, two systems" is a constitutional principle of the People's Republic of China (PRC) describing the governance of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The constitutional principle was formulated in the earl ...

" principle, the sources of law, the relationship between Hong Kong and the

Central Government A central government is the government that is a controlling power over a unitary state. Another distinct but sovereign political entity is a federal government, which may have distinct powers at various levels of government, authorized or del ...

(State Council), the fundamental rights and duties of Hong Kong residents and the branches of local government.

Spain

Under the current

Spanish Constitution of 1978 The Spanish Constitution (Spanish, Asturleonese, and gl, Constitución Española; eu, Espainiako Konstituzioa; ca, Constitució Espanyola; oc, Constitucion espanhòla) is the democratic law that is supreme in the Kingdom of Spain. It was ...

, an Organic Law has an intermediate status between that of an ordinary law and of the constitution itself. It must be passed by an absolute majority of the

Congress of Deputies The Congress of Deputies ( es, link=no, Congreso de los Diputados, italic=unset) is the lower house of the Cortes Generales, Spain's legislative branch. The Congress meets in the Palacio de las Cortes, Madrid, Palace of the Parliament () in Ma ...

. The Spanish Constitution specifies that some areas of law must be regulated by this procedure, such as the laws developing fundamental rights and freedoms recognized in the first section of Chapter Two of Title I of the Constitution, as well as the laws that approve the Statutes of Autonomy of the

autonomous communities of Spain eu, autonomia erkidegoa ca, comunitat autònoma gl, comunidade autónoma oc, comunautat autonòma an, comunidat autonoma ast, comunidá autónoma , alt_name = , map = , category = Autonomous administr ...

, among others. Prior to the 1978 constitution, the concept did not exist in Spain, but it is inspired by the similar concept in the 1958 French Constitution.

United States

The organic laws of the United States of America can be found in Volume One of the United States Code which contains the general and permanent laws of the United States.

U.S. Code In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America (variously abbreviated to Code of Laws of the United States, United States Code, U.S. Code, U.S.C., or USC) is the official compilation and codification of th ...

(2007) defines the organic laws of the United States of America to include the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, the Articles of Confederation of November 15, 1777, the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, and the Constitution of September 17, 1787.2007 Publication of the U.S. Code including the organic laws

References

;Notes ;Bibliography *http://edstudents.angelfire.com/papers/ORGANIC_LAW.pdf
Drafting Budget System Laws – IMF Technical Guidance Note, Ian Lienert and Israel Fainboim, IMF, 2007

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Organic Law Constitutional law Government documents Philosophy of law Law of France