Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Peace, order, and good government
Summary
In many Commonwealth jurisdictions, the phrase "peace, order, and good government" (POGG) is an expression used in law to express the legitimate objects of legislative powers conferred by statute. The phrase appears in many Imperial Acts of Parliament and Letters Patent, most notably the constitutions of Barbados, Canada, Australia and formerly New Zealand and South Africa.
It is often contrasted with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", a spiritually analogous phrase found in the US Declaration of Independence.
Legal documents often contain a residual clause which expresses which entity will have authority over jurisdictions that have not otherwise been delineated or are in dispute. While specific authorities are often enumerated in legal documents as well, the designation of a residual power helps provide direction to future decision-makers and in emerging issue areas.
At its origin, the preferred phrase was "peace, welfare and good government," but this eventually evolved into "peace, order and good government," which soon became part of the standard phraseology used in British colonies to denote the residual power of the government. Although this phrase is used in the constitutional documents of several commonwealth countries, it has taken on a particular importance in the Canadian constitution due to repeated disputes about the nature of residual federal power in Canada.
In Canada, "peace, order and good government" (in French, "paix, ordre et bon gouvernement") is sometimes abbreviated as POGG and is often used to describe the principles upon which that country's Confederation took place.
A similar phrase, "peace, welfare, and good government", had been used the Act of Union 1840 that created the Province of Canada. The now familiar phrase "peace, order and good government" was originally used in the British North America Act, 1867 (now known as the Constitution Act, 1867) enacted by the Imperial Parliament, and it defines the principles under which the Parliament of Canada should legislate.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.