Editing Codification (law) (section)

===England and Wales===
The English judge [[Sir Mackenzie Chalmers]] is renowned as the draftsman of the [[Bills of Exchange Act 1882]], the [[Sale of Goods Act 1893]] and the [[Marine Insurance Act 1906]], all of which codified existing [[common law]] principles. The Sale of Goods Act was repealed and re-enacted by the [[Sale of Goods Act 1979]] in a manner that revealed how sound the 1893 original had been.{{NoteTag|For the most part, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 retains the wording and section numbers of its 1893 predecessor.}} The Marine Insurance Act (mildly amended) has been a notable success, adopted ''verbatim'' in many common law jurisdictions.

Most of England's [[criminal law]]s have been codified, partly because this enables precision and certainty in prosecution. However, large areas of the common law, such as the [[law of contract]] and the [[law of tort]] remain remarkably untouched. In the last 80 years there have been statutes that address immediate problems, such as the [[Law Reform (Frustrated Contracts) Act 1943]] (which, ''inter alia'', coped with contracts rendered void by war), and the [[Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999]], which amended the [[Privity of contract|doctrine of privity]]. However, there has been no progress on the adoption of [[Harvey McGregor]]'s ''Contract Code'' (1993), even though the [[Law Commission]], together with the Scots Law Commission, asked him to produce a proposal for the comprehensive codification and unification of the contract law of England and Scotland. Similarly, codification in the law of tort has been at best piecemeal, a rare example of progress being the [[Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945]].

[[Consolidation bill|Consolidation bills]] are routinely passed to organize the law.