Democratic Union Legal Citations
Democratic Union Legal Citations are the system by which the government of the Democratic Union of British States orders and organises its legislation and legal system's judicial decisions. Under the Citations Act, "All laws passed, past, present and future... shall carry an alphanumeric string that may be used to refer to it."[1]
Citations
Legislative
Legislative citations have three parts.
The first is L followed by a number. The letter "L" stands for "Law", while the number refers to the session of the Democratic Union's National Council in which the law was considered. A hyphen is then inserted, and this hyphen is followed by the year in which the law was considered. A further hyphen is added, followed by the number indicating where the law appears in the legislative sequence. If, for instance, it were the fifth law passed by the council, the number would be 5.
For instance, in the case of the fifth law passed in the second session of the National Council in 2017, the legislative citation would read "L2-2017-5". Additionally, if the law was considered but defeated by either presidential veto or simply failing to achieve the correct majority in the National Council, a # is appended, but it is still added to the legislative sequence. In the previous example, the law following L2-2017-5# would be L2-2017-6.
Judicial
Judicial citations have three parts.
The first is either NC or LC, or "national court" or "lower court", indicating whether the decision took place in the National Constitutional Court or not. This is followed by a hyphen, and then the year in which the decision was made. A final hyphen is added, followed by its position in the judicial sequence.
For instance, in the case of the fifth decision made by the National Constitutional Court in 2019, it would read NC-2019-5. While the National Constitutional Court has a decision track to itself, decisions made by lower courts are collated collectively. This is to say, if a decision made by a lower court is the first of the year, and then another lower court makes a decision afterwards in that same year, the first decision will be cited as LC-2019-1 and the second decision as LC-2019-2.