Lino Spiteri’s statement (The Sunday Times, June 19) that “the legislative function takes place in the House of Representatives, and nowhere else” would, in any very basic Principles of Law examination, earn the writer negative marks. It is, legally speaking, totally incorrect, and potentially worthy of being described as a howler.

It is not only elected Members of Parliament who, legally speaking, ‘make law’. There is also what is known as ‘judge-made law’. This happens:

(a) Whenever the judiciary is called upon to decide on issues, or subjects, or areas, where Parliament would not have never passed legislation. In such circumstances the judiciary would be, technically and legally speaking, making law;

(b) Whenever the judiciary is called upon to interpret laws, or parts of them, which, in the to-be-expected ever existing handicap under which legislators normally function, parliamentarians could or would not have been expected to forsee all possible consequences thereof;

(c) Whenever the judiciary encounters particular circumstances that warrant that either an existing law, or a part of it, is to have the Speaker’s (ergo, the House’s) attention drawn to it. This is generally done via the Leader of the House;

(d) Whenever in fact a specific law, or part of it, is factually decreed by the judiciary to be unconstitutional. Such a judgment effectively also amounts to the making of law (in the sense of pronouncing nullity).

All of the above are factually circumstances when, other than the elected legislators, the other ‘ap­pointed’ legislators (i.e. the judiciary) would also be carrying out the legislating function.