Talk:Act of Parliament

Entry says:

1. (British) a law passed by both houses of Parliament, and given Royal Assent
2. (New Zealand) a law passed by Parliament, and given Royal Assent
3. (Australia) a law passed by the lower house of Parliament, and given Royal Assent
4. (Canada) a law passed by the lower house of Parliament, and given Royal Assent

This is wrong. In both Canada and Australia, both houses must pass the Bill; their situation is fundamentally the same as the United Kingdom. In all three cases, there are special circumstances were a Bill could become an Act despite being passed only by one house (use of the Parliament Act in the UK; joint sitting after double dissolution in Australia; in Canada, the House of Commons can override the Senate, but only in the case of proposals for a constitutional amendment).

Some points:

1. the definition is really the same whether we are dealing with a bicameral Parliament (UK, Australia, Canada, most Australian states, etc.) or a unicameral one (e.g. New Zealand or Queensland or Malta). Issues of camerality are not essential to the definition
2. the fact that bicameral systems often have the power to behave unicamerally in exceptional circumstances isn't really relevant to a dictionary definition either
3. in the Westminster system, assent is important, but it needn't be Royal -- Presidental assent in a Westminster-style Republic would be equivalent. So royal assent is not essential to the definition. Consider Malta currently, or the proposals for an Australian republic voted down in the 1999 referendum

I think a better definition might be:

1. (Commonwealth) a law which has received assent (whether royal or presidential or gubernatorial) after having been passed by the housess (or house) of Parliament

So I am going to change it to the above. --SJK 02:52, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

RFC discussion: March 2010

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Act of Parliament

Is this a common noun, if so is it redundant to the lowercase spelling? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:58, 4 March 2010 (UTC)