Organic Law

An organic law is one that is constitutionally required to regulate certain matters. Usually, due to the importance of the matters it regulates (fundamental rights of citizens or articulation of the various powers of the State, for example), for a legislative body to approve an organic law, more than a simple majority is required. The constitution usually prescribes that such rules be approved, for example, by an absolute majority or by some other type of qualified majority. With this, it is intended that it is not a conjunctural parliamentary majority that configures basic and fundamental aspects of citizen coexistence or the structure and organization of the powers of the people

In countries where there is this intermediate step between ordinary or common laws and the Constitution, it is normal for the application of organic laws to be limited to a series of specific matters (this is also called «reservation of law organic"). The rationale for this limitation is twofold:

• To force the regulation with a large parliamentary majority of certain very sensitive subjects.
• Avoiding such regulation, which is much more difficult to modify, in another type of more changing matter and which need greater flexibility in its regulation.

In comparative law, the most immediate legal history of organic laws is in French law, particularly in the French Constitution of 1958, which established an intermediate step between the constitutional norm and ordinary laws.

Regulation by countries

Chile

In Chile, the Constitutional Organic Law is a special category of the law of the Chilean legal system, established by the 1980 Constitution, which deals with matters expressly provided for in the same constitutional text and that require to be approved, modified or repealed of A special majority of four sevenths of deputies and senators in exercise.

Colombia

Those that the Constitution establishes taxatively. They are followed in hierarchy to statutory laws and a special procedure for expedition is established for their legal importance. The following belong to this category:

• The Rules of Congress and each of the Corporations (Article 151 of the Constitution).
• Regulations on the preparation, approval and execution of the income budget and the Appropriation Act (Articles 349, paragraph 1, and 350, paragraph 1 of the Constitution).
• The rules on the preparation, approval and implementation of the general development plan (Article 342, paragraph 1 of the Constitution).
• Rules relating to the allocation of regulatory powers to and between territorial entities and the Nation (Article 288 of the Constitution).
• Regulation for programming, approval, modification, implementation of the budgets of territorial entities and decentralized entities of any administrative level, and their coordination with the national development plan (Article 352 of the Constitution).
• The powers, administrative bodies, resources of the regions and their participation in the management of income from the national royalty fund (Article 307, paragraph 2, of the Constitution).
• The definition of the principles for the adoption of the special status of each region (Article 307, paragraph 2 of the Constitution).
• The establishment of the conditions, following the concept of the commission of territorial order, to request the conversion of the region into territorial entity, and subsequent referendum of the citizens of the departments concerned (Article 307, paragraph 1 of the Constitution).
• The establishment of the requirements to allow the National Congress to decree the formation of new departments (Article 297 of the Constitution).
• Regulation on the capacity of State agencies and entities to hire (Article 352 of the Constitution).
• The territorial system (Article 297 of the Constitution).

These laws will require an absolute majority for their approval, that is, half of the members, it is worth mentioning that the control made by the Constitutional Court must be by citizen demand.

Ecuador

In the Ecuadorian Constitution, the typicity of organic law has been established since the Magna Carta of 1998 (article 142), reflecting its same content in the Constitution of Montecristi of 2008. Article 133 literally mentions that the laws will be organic and ordinary. The organic laws are:

1. Those that regulate the organization and functioning of the institutions created by the Constitution.

2. Those that regulate the exercise of constitutional rights and guarantees.

3. Those that regulate the organization, competences, faculties and functioning of the decentralized autonomous governments.

4. Those related to the regime of political parties and the electoral system.

"The generally mandatory issuance, reform, repeal and interpretation of organic laws will require an absolute majority of the members of the National Assembly. The rest will be ordinary laws, which may not modify or prevail over an organic law."

Spain

In the Spanish legal system, the relationship between organic laws and ordinary laws is not of a hierarchical nature, as is the case in the relationship between law and regulation, but rather it is a relationship based on subject matter. That is to say, that the matters reserved for organic laws cannot be regulated by ordinary law, establishing a relationship between both Laws of a material nature, resulting in the fact that one cannot interfere in the spheres of action of the other. This idea is the starting point to consider what type of Law will be the prevailing one for a given case, and not a supposed hierarchy between both types of Law.

Regarding its relationship with the democratic element, and as the Constitutional Court has repeatedly stated in its judgments STC 5/1981 and STC 213/1996, the attribution of the rank of Organic Law to certain precepts of a law should not be carried out beyond the cases specially determined in article 81 of the Constitution, because, according to the reiterated doctrine of this Court, it constitutes an exception to the general regime of parliamentary majorities, the basis of the democratic system, which can only be admitted in the cases expressly provided for by the aforementioned constitutional precept.

The matters that must be regulated by means of the Organic Law in Spain are:

• Development of fundamental rights and public freedoms
• Adoption and modification of the Statutes of Autonomy
• General electoral system
• Development / Amendment of the constitution.

In total within the Spanish Constitution we find 20 references to the Organic Law, most of them deal with the institutional and territorial organization of the Spanish State, for example, institutions such as the Constitutional Court (art. 165), the Council of State (art. 107), the Ombudsman (art. 54) or the Armed Forces (art. 8).

Dominican Republic

Organic laws are those that by their nature regulate fundamental rights; the structure and organization of public powers; the public function; the electoral regime; the financial economic regime; the budget, planning and public investment; territorial organization; constitutional procedures; security and defense; the matters expressly referred to by the Constitution and others of the same nature. For their approval or modification, they will require the favorable vote of two thirds of those present in both chambers.

Venezuelan

Article 203 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela states in its first three paragraphs:

«The organic laws are those that this Constitution denominates; those issued to organize public powers or to develop constitutional rights and those that serve as a regulatory framework for other laws.

All organic bills, except those that this Constitution qualifies as such, will be previously admitted by the National Assembly, by the vote of two thirds of the members present before the discussion of the respective bill begins.. This qualified vote will also apply to the modification of organic laws.

The laws that the National Assembly has qualified as organic will be sent, before their promulgation, to the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, so that it can rule on the constitutionality of their organic nature. The Constitutional Chamber will decide within ten days from the date of receipt of the communication. If the Constitutional Chamber declares that it is not organic, the law will lose this character."

Peru

These organic laws also exist in the Peruvian legal system. This is how in article 106 of the Constitution of Peru it is indicated that they are those that "regulate the structure and operation of the State entities provided for in the Constitution, as well as the other matters whose regulation by organic law is established in the Constitution".

In this case, in Peru, it will be approved and modified by the absolute majority of the members of Congress.