New Zealand is doing something very interesting. They have a Police Act Review Wiki where you can contribute to the Police Act. It will be interesting to see just how specialist a legislator has to be; if citizens are educated enough and capable of making legal documents that can survive constitutional scrutiny what need is there for specialist legislators in parliament? They pretty much become electoral specialists then. Which is a totally different and more cynical animal.
The wiki isn't entirely citizen legislation though, it is expected to be an adjunct to the normal parliamentary drafting process. From the main page of the wiki:
An official Bill is currently being written-up by parliamentary drafters, but in parallel there's an opportunity for others to suggest how a new Policing Act might look by contributing to a wiki Act. It'll be kept open until 1 November 2007, when the results can be fed back into the official law-making process. Creating this online environment is a continuation of the open process used throughout the Police Act Review. It's all about encouraging a national conversation on policing. The new Act will need to cover a wide range of topics, from high-level governance to day-to-day administration. To help get people started, we've included some headings and a few example ideas. But don't feel constrained. For instance, if you'd prefer to work offline and upload a complete Act for others to comment on, by all means add it beneath the one we've started (there's a space provided under the "Alternative versions" heading).It will be interesting to see if law becomes trans-national with non NZ citizens start contributing to the Police Act in order to restrict policing capabilities and maximise liberties. The technology of Citizen Legislators is similar to Citizen Auditors which are spontaneous forming of auditing groups to audit government by interested citizens. Citizen auditors can act as part of a free and independent quality control process on parliament. The FOI (freedom of information) process is supposed to aid this but at the state level it is becoming increasingly restricted by a secretive executive claiming executive privilege. It would improve governance if citizens were given wide ranging auditing capabilities of government. More More discussion on slashdot: New Zealand Police Act Wiki Lets You Write the Law which is where I saw it originally.
