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The wording of nine Jersey laws is set to be updated to reduce confusion over the words “flammable” and “inflammable”.
The Law Revision Board explained that that "many readers assume that 'inflammable' is the opposite of 'flammable', despite both words having the same meaning.
Before the update, Jersey legislation used a mix of both “flammable” and “inflammable”.
The Legislative Drafting Office has the power to "alter any words to secure uniformity of expression in any legislation" or "change the wording for the better application of plain language principles".
They are proposing that all legislative instances of “inflammable” are replaced with “flammable”, and “non-inflammable” with “non-flammable” to tackle the confusion.
The updates will mostly apply to harbour regulations, as well as some customs and motor laws.
The Law Revision Board also recently turned its attention to which laws may need a tweak in the wake of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
It found that a total of 344 Jersey laws would have to be updated to reflect the change of monarch.
In most cases, any words that refer to the late Queen are replaced with words that refer to the King – for example, “Her Majesty’s Attorney General” is changed to “His Majesty’s Attorney General”, and “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second” is changed to “His Majesty King Charles the Third”.
Pictured: Some references to Her Majesty had to be kept to reflect past actions.
However, in some cases, the Law Revision Board said the reference to the Sovereign should be removed entirely.
This was to "modernise the drafting to align with current drafting practice", as well as preserving the legal effect of the legislation in cases where the it must apply to both past and future actions of the Sovereign.
Not all references to Her Majesty were removed, however, as some needed to be retained to refer to past actions or mentions contained in the text of international agreements.
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