Comparative Summary
Ruth Leoush
Senior Foreign Law Specialist
This report addresses the lifecycle of parliamentary documents in Australia, Canada, the European Parliament, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, and the UK. The report contains individual jurisdictional surveys prepared by foreign law specialists in the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress based on researching legal sources published in the jurisdictions surveyed, where applicable in the native languages.
The jurisdictions surveyed include ones with unicameral parliamentary systems, composed of Israel, Portugal, and Sweden, and those with bicameral systems, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. The European Parliament, the European Union's only directly elected body, is also surveyed.
The lifecycle of parliamentary documents, also referred to as the parliamentary document process, consists of the processing, producing, publishing, collecting, preserving, and distributing to users of parliamentary documents. Parliamentary documents subject to processing in the jurisdictions surveyed often include documents and records that are produced in parliament, such as bills and related information, explanatory memoranda and bill digests, petitions, tabled papers, written and audio reports of parliamentary proceedings, and parliamentary research publications.
While certain types of parliamentary documents are published in the official gazettes of the jurisdictions surveyed, other documents are often preserved as part of a historical parliamentary archive as well as in current legislative records. Depending on whether a jurisdiction has more than one official language, documents may be published in all the official languages, as is the case in Canada and the European Parliament. Israel has special procedures for documenting and translating speeches by foreign dignitaries and statements in a language other than Hebrew made in parliament.
Access to parliamentary documents is guaranteed under constitutional provisions in France, Japan, Portugal, and Sweden. The production, publication, and preservation of parliamentary documents in all surveyed jurisdictions are also governed by legislation, standing orders, resolutions, and procedural rules of the relevant parliamentary chambers.
National or parliamentary archives have traditionally engaged in official record keeping of parliamentary documents in some jurisdictions, with national or parliamentary libraries also contributing by collecting and providing access to various parliamentary documents along with reference and analysis to advise members, where applicable.
The jurisdictional surveys of Australia, Canada, the European Parliament, Germany, Israel, and Portugal describe special procedures for documenting, correcting, and approving recording of floor proceedings and hearing minutes in the plenum and in committees, with different rules applicable in some jurisdictions for confidential hearings and records.
