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AGO: Some TT business regulations still in effect
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Posted on Aug 30 2005
Trust Territory business regulations that have not been repealed or superceded are still in force or effect and should be included in the new CNMI Administrative Code being compiled by the Law Revision Commission, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Assistant attorney general Alan J. Barak explained that the Constitution’s transitional provision provided that old Trust Territory laws would continue in effect unless repealed or superceded.
The AGO issued this legal opinion at the request of LRC executive director Naomi E. Lujan. She had raised the issue concerning the continuation of TT regulations, particularly those with regard to nonprofit corporations and partnerships.
According to Barak, the Trust Territory’s 1974 regulations governing partnerships and nonprofit corporations were never repealed or superceded.
“While the new Commonwealth Legislature did supercede the TT’s for-profit corporation regulations with comprehensive new laws, it never addressed the partnership or nonprofit regulations,” he said.
He added that the Constitution was clear that TT law should continue in place unless CNMI law came to provide otherwise.
He noted that the Commonwealth Register was the only way to look to determine whether TT laws had been repealed or superceded since the Northern Marianas became a commonwealth.
“The register offers no changes or repealers for the…regulations in question. The registrar deliberately left in place the unrepealed provisions and indeed relies on them daily. The distinction between the repealed and preserved regulations was clear and simple. This distinction has operated to preserve, as law, the partnership and nonprofit business corporation regulations,” Barak said.
“Under well-settled principles of statutory construction, the two sets of old regulations survive, and are still in full force and effect. The LRC should include the partnership and nonprofit regulations in its upcoming codification, the Commonwealth’s Administrative Code,” he added.
