Nubian Rights Forum & 2 others v Attorney General & 6 others; Child Welfare Society & 9 others (Interested Parties) [2020] eKLR 118 of the Constitution before the enactment of the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Act 2012.” [Emphasis supplied] 672. The invitation to this Court to find that the decision of the Court of Appeal on the issue of the use of omnibus legislation was made in passing cannot be correct in such circumstances. The issue had been raised by the appellant. It was a matter for consideration by the Court of Appeal and was indeed decided upon. In the circumstances we find no substance in the claim by Counsel for the 6th Respondent that the question was dealt with in passing. We therefore reject the invitation to find that the decision of the Court of Appeal is not binding. 673. We come back to the question of the use of omnibus Bills in the legislative process. The High Court in the 2016 Law Society Case did extensive work on the issue and we need not cite the several authorities considered by the Court. It is, however, important to note that as observed in that case, there is no uniformity on how omnibus Bills are used in different jurisdictions: “This brings to the fore the question of the circumstances under which statutory amendments ought to be effected by way of Statute Law Miscellaneous legislation. That such a procedure ought to avail only in cases of minor non-controversial amendments was appreciated by the 2nd Respondent when it indicated in the Memorandum of Objects and Reasons of the Bill….that….[t]he Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2015 is in keeping with the practice of making minor amendments which do not merit the publication of a separate Bill and consolidating them into one Bill. .That this is the practice is clearly discernible from the practice adopted in most jurisdictions, though the practice is not consistent….While we appreciate that there is no internationally accepted position on the legality of omnibus bills, the reality is that they are used in many jurisdictions.” 674. There is indeed enough literature on the shortcomings associated with using omnibus Bills to effect substantive amendments to Acts of Parliament. Some of those shortcomings were captured in the 2016 Law Society Case in which the High Court cited a paper titled “Omnibus Bills in Theory and Practice” by Louis Massicotte published in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, Vol. 36 No. 1 2013, where the author states:“The real question, however, beyond the convenience of the government or of the opposition parties, may well be: is the public interest well served by omnibus bills" Take for example the clause-by-clause study in committee. When a bill deals with topics as varied as fisheries, unemployment insurance and environment, it is unlikely to be examined properly if the whole bill goes to the Standing Committee on Finance. The opposition parties complain legitimately that their critics on many topics covered by an omnibus bill have already been assigned to other committees. The public has every interest in a legislation being examined by the appropriate bodies.” 675. There is no doubt that the use of omnibus Bills to effect substantive amendments has its shortcomings. Such a process generally limits the right of the people to participate in the passing of laws. When Parliament proposes to make several amendments to assorted statutes relating to different activities, chances are that the proposals will not receive the kind of attention they should if they had been enacted through stand-alone Bills. The risk of excluding the public from participating in the legislative process is exacerbated if a short period for submitting views is provided. This risk was appreciated by Louis Massicotte (supra) as cited in the 2016 Law Society Case in the passage that we have set out above. The use of omnibus Bills may have advantages for government for, as Massicotte observed: “From the point of view of the government, omnibus bills have plenty of advantages....First, they save time and shorten legislative proceedings by avoiding the preparation of dozens of distinct bills necessitating as many second reading debates. Second, omnibus bills generate embarrassment within opposition parties by diluting highly controversial moves within a complex package, some parts of which are quite popular with the public or http://www.kenyalaw.org - Page 108/174