Introduction

Creating a proposition or a legal norm requires from the legislator an internal coherence in the normative text. However, it’s important to emphasise that the legislator’s mission does not solely consist of drafting laws, which would be limiting them to legislative technique. Rather, it extends to the finesse of legislative art – Ars Legis – as an instrumental science, the foundation for constructing the legal order. As an ‘art’, the legislator must also take care of the aesthetic aspect in the construction of laws.

Legislation in Brazil

In Brazil, what is stipulated in the Republic Constitution has been adopted, in the sense that the drafting, amendment, and consolidation of laws are actions regulated by a complementary law. Hence, we have complementary law no. 95, of 26th February 1998, with rules for systematisation in drafting legal diplomas, seeking a stylistic uniformity in textual presentation.

The Role of Legislative Science and its Impact

According to the teachings of Luís Fernando Machado, “Legistics, in an incipient way, should fill the gap left by the distancing of people from power.” This closeness will confer more legitimacy to the legislative production, guaranteeing a greater feeling of belonging and knowledge of rights and duties, generating effects beyond the crisis of laws, reaching, even, the crisis of representation.

At this point, the legislator must adhere to the criteria to introduce or not a law into the legal universe, which is a rarity. Most of the time, the legislator imposes their legislative ideas without considering the social impact, not to mention the aspects of constitutionality, legality, juridicity, and legislative technique.

The Role of the Law Drafter

To the law drafter, civil servants designated to transpose the legislative idea and actualise its presentation, are often led to rewrite texts due to discrepancies between what was requested of them and what the legislator wishes. The desire is to put on paper a spurious draft, devoid of style and art. We have already foreseen that “the law is a science, and its production an art; by learning the rules, we will, technically, become great artists”, motivating those legislators that a law introduced into the legal universe must be systematised in a coherent way so that the law results in positive social impact and the quality of legislation is the exponent of their mandates.