France Under Article 46 of the
Constitution of France, organic laws (in French,
lois organiques; in English sometimes translated as Institutional Acts) are a short, fixed list of statutes (in 2005, there were about 30 of them) specified in the Constitution. They overrule ordinary statutes. They must be properly enacted by the
Parliament of France following a special procedure and must be approved for constitutionality by the
Constitutional Council of France before they can be
promulgated. Organic laws allow flexibility if needed. An important category of organic laws includes the budgets of the
French state and French
social security. Other organic laws give the practical procedures for various
elections. Organic laws reduce the need for amendments to the constitution.
Hong Kong The
Basic Law of Hong Kong is a national law of
China that serves as the organic law for the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). Comprising nine chapters, 160 articles and three annexes, the Basic Law was composed to implement
Annex I of the 1984
Sino-British Joint Declaration. The Basic Law was enacted under the
Constitution of China when it was adopted by the
National People's Congress on 4 April 1990 and came into effect on 1 July 1997 when Hong Kong was
transferred from the
United Kingdom to China. It replaced Hong Kong's colonial constitution of the
Letters Patent and the
Royal Instructions. The Basic Law lays out the basic policies of China on Hong Kong until 2047, including the "
one country, two systems" principle, the sources of
law, the relationship between Hong Kong and the
Central Government (State Council), the fundamental rights and duties of Hong Kong residents and the branches of local government.
Spain Under the current
Spanish Constitution of 1978, an Organic Law has an intermediate status between that of an ordinary law and of the constitution itself. It must be passed by an absolute majority of the
Congress of Deputies. The Spanish Constitution specifies that some areas of law must be regulated by this procedure, such as the laws developing fundamental rights and freedoms recognized in the first section of Chapter Two of Title I of the Constitution, as well as the laws that approve the
Statutes of Autonomy of the
autonomous communities of Spain, among others. Prior to the 1978 constitution, the concept did not exist in Spain, but it is inspired by the similar concept in the 1958 French Constitution.
United States The organic laws of the United States of America can be found in Volume One of the United States Code which contains the general and permanent laws of the United States. The following texts are classified in the
U.S. Code as organic laws: the
Declaration of Independence, the
Articles of Confederation, the
Northwest Ordinance, and the
US Constitution. ==See also==