The duty of Parliament to adopt reliable legislation: Linking trust in Parliament with legitimate expectations

This presentation links trust-in-parliament studies with studies on the legal notion of ‘legitimate expectations’ related to legislation. The legal notion demands that Parliament does not frustrate the expectations of people that rely on legislation. This gives a normative feature to the idea of trust: Parliament should produce reliable legislation, and should therefore be trustworthy so as to not harm individual interests through unexpected changes in legislation. The central question is: how is the notion of legitimate expectations related to the concept of trust in Parliament? This way, the relationship between reliability and trustworthiness, or between prediction and trust, is clarified. By analysing the interplay of trust and legal alternatives to trust, the presentation puts the finger on the role of courts in conceptualizing the principle of legitimate expectations.