section_path: Provisions/Shared lawmaking power
section_name: Shared lawmaking power
paragraph_text: Shared lawmaking power
  
  A unique feature of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic is that it establishes a shared law-making power between two branches of government: the legislative branch, where such powers resided in previous constitutions; and the executive branch, headed by the president and the prime minister appointed by the president.
  
  Parliament has the fundamental responsibility for passing legislation in the Fifth Republic. There are two Houses of Parliament: the National Assembly and the Senate. The Assembly is directly elected, and the more important, and has primary power in passing legislation; the Senate can delay legislation, but not ultimately block it.
  
  Traditionally, the prime minister is the executive branch's liaison with the parliament; Article 49 says they must pledge this role. This is weaker than the constitutions of the Third or Fourth republics, where the government could not be installed until the parliament had received the pledge from the prime minister.
  
  The unique aspect in the Fifth Republic is in Article 21, where the prime minister has power to make legislation. In another unique feature in Article 38, the Parliament can temporarily delegate a portion of its constitutional law-making power to the government to enable rapid consummation of urgent legislation, by passing an enabling law of legislative delegation called a loi d'habilitation ("enabling law").
  
  According to Article 21, a loi d'habilitation may be issued by the parliament upon request of the government to temporarily delegate the parliament's constitutional law-making power to the government in a specifically defined subject area and for a specific length of time. While in effect, Parliament is blocked from issuing statutes in that area, and the government is permitted to draw up ordonnances that normally would be beyond their remit. The ordonnance comes into effect immediately, but must be ratified by Parliament before the end of the period or it expires. Until ratification, the ordonnance has the same status as a réglement (regulation), and can therefore be challenged by the Council of State; but after ratification, it takes on the same status as a statute (loi), and can no longer be challenged. In practice, there have been 23 such lois d'habilitation from 1960 to 1990, with effective periods from one month to three and a half years, resulting in 150 ordonnances. About a third of them were subsequently ratified by Parliament. The loi d'habilitation is a new constitutional feature, not present in earlier constitutions.
  
  Power sharing was unique in being part of the constitution in the Fifth Republic, but the practice was not recent.
  
  The determination that the parliament has responsibility for the law goes back to article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, and the role of the executive branch was only to execute it. In theory, the parliament would specify general laws, and the executive could only make regulations about how to apply the laws to day-to-day situations. In practice, this turned out differently, as the parliament on its own initiative sometimes passed acts delegating to the executive the right to alter or void acts of parliament, called décrets-lois. This practice slowly found its way into the Constitution.
  
  Although Article 1 of the Third Republic 's Constitutional Act of 25 February 1874 explicitly forbade the parliament to delegate its responsibility, within five years this was ignored and had occurred several times. In 1939, in the run-up to the Second World War, Parliament gave the government power to enact decrees to protect the country. This practice became entrenched after the war, despite the fact that Article 13 of the 1946 Constitution of the newly founded Fourth Republic expressly forbade it. Part of the reason for this, was a lot of squabbling among numerous small political parties in the parliament, who were unable to agree on anything and were ineffective in passing legislation. This became especially problematic in the 1950s, as the crisis in Algeria began to heat up, and the parliament was unable to deal with it. Charles de Gaulle, a private citizen at the time, conceived that the way out was to have a more powerful executive and a weaker parliament; when he was finally invited to form a new government in 1958 and write a constitution, his ideas were incorporated into the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, including the legislative power-sharing defined in Articles 21 and 38.
  
  In the original version of Article 37, everything that was not reserved to the legislative domain in the article was of a regulatory character (i.e., under control of the executive branch), although that clause was removed later. Since 1982, the legislative domain expanded, and since the landmark 1971 decision of the Constitutional Council, additional sources were defined as part of the constitutional block, such as the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1946 constitutional preamble, which were henceforth part of the legislative domain, and after further reforms in 1996, the legislative domain has more power than was originally thought in 1958.
  
  A unique feature of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic is that it establishes a shared law-making power between two branches of government: the legislative branch, where such powers resided in previous constitutions; and the executive branch, headed by the president and the prime minister appointed by the president.
  
  Parliament has the fundamental responsibility for passing legislation in the Fifth Republic. There are two Houses of Parliament: the National Assembly and the Senate. The Assembly is directly elected, and the more important, and has primary power in passing legislation; the Senate can delay legislation, but not ultimately block it.
  
  Traditionally, the prime minister is the executive branch's liaison with the parliament; Article 49 says they must pledge this role. This is weaker than the constitutions of the Third or Fourth republics, where the government could not be installed until the parliament had received the pledge from the prime minister.
  
  The unique aspect in the Fifth Republic is in Article 21, where the prime minister has power to make legislation. In another unique feature in Article 38, the Parliament can temporarily delegate a portion of its constitutional law-making power to the government to enable rapid consummation of urgent legislation, by passing an enabling law of legislative delegation called a loi d'habilitation ("enabling law").
  
  According to Article 21, a loi d'habilitation may be issued by the parliament upon request of the government to temporarily delegate the parliament's constitutional law-making power to the government in a specifically defined subject area and for a specific length of time. While in effect, Parliament is blocked from issuing statutes in that area, and the government is permitted to draw up ordonnances that normally would be beyond their remit. The ordonnance comes into effect immediately, but must be ratified by Parliament before the end of the period or it expires. Until ratification, the ordonnance has the same status as a réglement (regulation), and can therefore be challenged by the Council of State; but after ratification, it takes on the same status as a statute (loi), and can no longer be challenged. In practice, there have been 23 such lois d'habilitation from 1960 to 1990, with effective periods from one month to three and a half years, resulting in 150 ordonnances. About a third of them were subsequently ratified by Parliament. The loi d'habilitation is a new constitutional feature, not present in earlier constitutions.
  
  Power sharing was unique in being part of the constitution in the Fifth Republic, but the practice was not recent.
  
  The determination that the parliament has responsibility for the law goes back to article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, and the role of the executive branch was only to execute it. In theory, the parliament would specify general laws, and the executive could only make regulations about how to apply the laws to day-to-day situations. In practice, this turned out differently, as the parliament on its own initiative sometimes passed acts delegating to the executive the right to alter or void acts of parliament, called décrets-lois. This practice slowly found its way into the Constitution.
  
  Although Article 1 of the Third Republic 's Constitutional Act of 25 February 1874 explicitly forbade the parliament to delegate its responsibility, within five years this was ignored and had occurred several times. In 1939, in the run-up to the Second World War, Parliament gave the government power to enact decrees to protect the country. This practice became entrenched after the war, despite the fact that Article 13 of the 1946 Constitution of the newly founded Fourth Republic expressly forbade it. Part of the reason for this, was a lot of squabbling among numerous small political parties in the parliament, who were unable to agree on anything and were ineffective in passing legislation. This became especially problematic in the 1950s, as the crisis in Algeria began to heat up, and the parliament was unable to deal with it. Charles de Gaulle, a private citizen at the time, conceived that the way out was to have a more powerful executive and a weaker parliament; when he was finally invited to form a new government in 1958 and write a constitution, his ideas were incorporated into the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, including the legislative power-sharing defined in Articles 21 and 38.
  
  In the original version of Article 37, everything that was not reserved to the legislative domain in the article was of a regulatory character (i.e., under control of the executive branch), although that clause was removed later. Since 1982, the legislative domain expanded, and since the landmark 1971 decision of the Constitutional Council, additional sources were defined as part of the constitutional block, such as the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1946 constitutional preamble, which were henceforth part of the legislative domain, and after further reforms in 1996, the legislative domain has more power than was originally thought in 1958.
  
  A unique feature of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic is that it establishes a shared law-making power between two branches of government: the legislative branch, where such powers resided in previous constitutions; and the executive branch, headed by the president and the prime minister appointed by the president.
  
  Parliament has the fundamental responsibility for passing legislation in the Fifth Republic. There are two Houses of Parliament: the National Assembly and the Senate. The Assembly is directly elected, and the more important, and has primary power in passing legislation; the Senate can delay legislation, but not ultimately block it.
  
  Traditionally, the prime minister is the executive branch's liaison with the parliament; Article 49 says they must pledge this role. This is weaker than the constitutions of the Third or Fourth republics, where the government could not be installed until the parliament had received the pledge from the prime minister.
  
  The unique aspect in the Fifth Republic is in Article 21, where the prime minister has power to make legislation. In another unique feature in Article 38, the Parliament can temporarily delegate a portion of its constitutional law-making power to the government to enable rapid consummation of urgent legislation, by passing an enabling law of legislative delegation called a loi d'habilitation ("enabling law").
  
  According to Article 21, a loi d'habilitation may be issued by the parliament upon request of the government to temporarily delegate the parliament's constitutional law-making power to the government in a specifically defined subject area and for a specific length of time. While in effect, Parliament is blocked from issuing statutes in that area, and the government is permitted to draw up ordonnances that normally would be beyond their remit. The ordonnance comes into effect immediately, but must be ratified by Parliament before the end of the period or it expires. Until ratification, the ordonnance has the same status as a réglement (regulation), and can therefore be challenged by the Council of State; but after ratification, it takes on the same status as a statute (loi), and can no longer be challenged. In practice, there have been 23 such lois d'habilitation from 1960 to 1990, with effective periods from one month to three and a half years, resulting in 150 ordonnances. About a third of them were subsequently ratified by Parliament. The loi d'habilitation is a new constitutional feature, not present in earlier constitutions.
  
  Power sharing was unique in being part of the constitution in the Fifth Republic, but the practice was not recent.
  
  The determination that the parliament has responsibility for the law goes back to article 6 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, and the role of the executive branch was only to execute it. In theory, the parliament would specify general laws, and the executive could only make regulations about how to apply the laws to day-to-day situations. In practice, this turned out differently, as the parliament on its own initiative sometimes passed acts delegating to the executive the right to alter or void acts of parliament, called décrets-lois. This practice slowly found its way into the Constitution.
  
  Although Article 1 of the Third Republic 's Constitutional Act of 25 February 1874 explicitly forbade the parliament to delegate its responsibility, within five years this was ignored and had occurred several times. In 1939, in the run-up to the Second World War, Parliament gave the government power to enact decrees to protect the country. This practice became entrenched after the war, despite the fact that Article 13 of the 1946 Constitution of the newly founded Fourth Republic expressly forbade it. Part of the reason for this, was a lot of squabbling among numerous small political parties in the parliament, who were unable to agree on anything and were ineffective in passing legislation. This became especially problematic in the 1950s, as the crisis in Algeria began to heat up, and the parliament was unable to deal with it. Charles de Gaulle, a private citizen at the time, conceived that the way out was to have a more powerful executive and a weaker parliament; when he was finally invited to form a new government in 1958 and write a constitution, his ideas were incorporated into the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, including the legislative power-sharing defined in Articles 21 and 38.
  
  In the original version of Article 37, everything that was not reserved to the legislative domain in the article was of a regulatory character (i.e., under control of the executive branch), although that clause was removed later. Since 1982, the legislative domain expanded, and since the landmark 1971 decision of the Constitutional Council, additional sources were defined as part of the constitutional block, such as the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1946 constitutional preamble, which were henceforth part of the legislative domain, and after further reforms in 1996, the legislative domain has more power than was originally thought in 1958.