Legislature

LEGISLATURE Common perception of the legislature is to make law. In actual practice, the modern legislature is much more than a mere law-making body. First function is law making. The Legislature will make a new law or to amend it or to replace old laws. In a parliamentary system, the party which has majority in the parliament forms the cabinet, so any bill from a minister should gets approval from parliament. Legislature discusses and debates the bill which goes through several readings and committee stages before becoming a law. The final authority of making laws lies in the hands of legislature. Next function is representative. The legislature represents the people in the government. According to Pitkin representation means ’making present of something absent but not making it literally present. It must be made present indirectly, through an intermediary, it must be made present in some sense, while nevertheless remaining literally absent` This is exactly what a legislature does in a democratic system. The members of legislature are the representatives of the public. They represent and ventilate the grievances of the people. The Members frequently visit their constituency, home district, to listen to the people from his or her riding and bring those issues and questions to the floor of the legislature a large number of people cannot talk to the government directly. Legislature is a political compromise of direct and indirect democracy. Supervision is one of the functions of legislature. Legislature has authority of checking and supervising the executive branch of government. In a modern democratic system legislature keep sharp and critical eyes on the administration. It may be true that legislation is initiated by the executive, but the legislature has the potential power to reject the bill. Even if it passes the bill, the legislature has the power to monitor the activities of the government to make sure the law is implemented correctly and effectively. The legislature can race and embarrassing questions to the minister. Question Hour exist in every political systems .Even though it may be possible for the minister to get the support of the majority in the legislature because of party link, minister have to be very careful in answering question. In particular the Opposition party cab race the questions in a very nasty way and if the minister fail to answer satisfactorily it can cause

the ruling party lost in the next election. The members of the cabinet are responsible at all time to the legislature in a parliamentary system. The legislature in many countries performs certain judicial function. Some legislatures have the power to adjudicate the behavior the administrative official. In Canada and Malaysia parliament does not impeach the king or minister because it has the power of defeating government but a vote of no-confidence or by removing a minister from the cabinet who has been found guilty of a crime. Amending the constitution also part of legislature functions. in some countries, the legislature plays the most important role in making and amending the constitution. The legislature is given this authority because it is considered to be the legitimate representative constitution of the people, and also the original constitution was drafted by the legislature. so it is appropriate the legislature is authorized to play a vital roles in the process of constitutional reform. In Malaysia, Canada, Britain, India and the USA and many other countries the amending process must start in the legislature. The approval of amendment depends on the support of a certain number of members of the legislature which differs from country to country.

EXECUTIVE The most fundamental functions of the executive are those which relate to the essential activities of daily administration. The state is now regarded as a mean for achieving the welfare of its own people. Broadly speaking, essential functions of the executive are Internal Administration, External Administration, Military Functions, Legislative Functions and Judicial Functions. In the internal administration the foremost duty of the executive department is to ensure law and order in society. It must maintain internal peace and security. For this the executive relies on the huge number of civil servants and police officials. The executive formulate the policy and once those policies are approved by legislature it is the responsibilities of the executive to implement those principles. In simple term, the executive executes. In all political system public policy is the result of whatever executive want to do. Increasing or decreasing taxes, reducing or increasing defense budget, giving foreign aids to developing countries, funding for research and the like are all examples of public policies. All new policies and programs are initiated by the executive. After the adoption of the policies the executive oversees their implementation. The different departments and agency are entrusted with specifics responsibilities and every department execute the laws of the countries which falls under its jurisdiction. The top executive coordinates the activities of various department and agencies. The top executive appoints secretaries and other top officials to head various departments. Functions on external administration are all states are independent, but every state interrelated with others states. The executive is responsible to ensure mutual interaction among states for peace and securities. The executive responsibilities lie in the ministry of foreign or external affairs. Military functions are one of the essential responsibilities of the executive is to secure territorial integrity of the state and to protect the country from external aggression, and if necessary, to wage war. The top executive is the chief of staff in every country of the world. However, the actual power is exercise by a department under its control, called the department of defense’s and wars which determined the strength and organization of the arm forces of the

country. The head of the executive appoint the general and commands in the army, navy and air forces. During the war, the power of the executive increases immensely because the executive may takes any actions necessary to save guard the security of the country. The executive may summon the army to protect the interest of the nations. Next function is judicial functions. The executive function is charges some judicial function. Usually in most government the executive is required to keep an eye on the administration of courts and to guarantee it citizen’s fairness and impartiality in justice. Therefore the head of the executive appoints the judges in most countries. Beside appointing judges, the executive has two important judicial power which are granting pardons and granting amnesty. The most important judicial power of the top executive is the power f granting pardon to a convicted person. The king of Malaysia has this power. This sometime became necessary to avoid the death of a very important person or a person maybe politically convicted. This also prevents possible judicial malpractice. Another important power of the executive in judicial matters is to grant amnesty to a group of person usually political offenders.

JUDICIARY The primary of the courts is to ensure administration of justice. Courts are agencies for the decision of dispute between individual and individual, and citizens and the state. In ordinary sense it seems that courts do little more than to decide dispute. While giving judgment on cases, courts do a number of jobs beyond the settlement of disputes. They perform the following functions. Establishing facts. The primary functions of the judiciary are to established and determined facts. When a case comes before the courts it usually remains ambiguous. The responsibility of the courts is to determine the ‘facts’ in order to deduce the truth. The procedure is that the conflicting parties bring forward witnesses to produce evidence in support of their respective contentions. Witnesses present evidences either in writing, orally or both. The courts formulate a set of rules to govern the parties in producing witnesses and subjecting them to interrogation. The judges listen to those witnesses and weigh the testimony. Finally based on this evidences the court determined the fact. Interpreting laws. The second function of the judiciary is to apply the law to the fact which have already being found by investigation and then render decision. The judge does not evaluate the merit of the law related to the case. The task of the judge is to accept the relevant law to the case as it is and apply it to the ascertained facts. The judge is the integrator of law. Next function is creating laws. Laws are made to deal with broad issues. But in dealing with specifics case the existing law may appear to be ambiguous. They may be worded in such a way that is difficult to determine their exact meaning. Also with changing condition in the society issues are presented which will not consider when the laws were made. The existing law may not be consistent with present situation. Under such a situation the court has to decide the nature, scope and meaning of law. Further more if different laws conflict with each other the courts have to decide which shall prevail. More importantly it can happen that a particular type of crime is not fully covered by the existing law at all. Under such circumstances, the courts have

to create a new law. The judges are thus interpreters of law as well as law makers and large volume of law is made out of ‘judge-made’ laws in many countries.

Upholding the constitutional is one of the function. The judiciary is guardian of the constitution. Especially in a federal system of a government the constitution delimit the jurisdiction of various branches and units of a government. The court interprets the constitution. Neither the government nor the state government can past a law repugnant to be constitution. In case of conflict between the central and regional governments, the courts decide of the dispute. Also, the court offers judgment in case of a conflict between the executive and legislature. Preventing infraction of law. The court performs the function of preventing infraction of law and the violation of human rights. It is not necessary that parties or persons have to wait their rights had been actually violated. Citizens can approach the courts for protection before the actual violation occurs. If such person have reason to believe that attempts will be make to violate their rights they can appeal to the court and the court will issue orders prohibiting such attempts until the right is determined. The order so issued is known as ‘restraining orders’ or ‘injunctions’. Judicial review. In a great majority of democratic countries the courts entrusted with the power of judicial review. It means that the court has the power to declare any act of the legislature or of the executive null and void, and consequently, invalid if they are found to be in conflict with the constitution.