[ELI5] In practice, what’s the difference of Policy, Regulation, and Law?
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A policy is purely discretionary. It can change on a dime. It’s essentially a politician’s promise, which is not binding at all, and often ignored. It’s especially likely to change if a new President is elected, although historically some U.S. foreign policies have been carried out by Republicans and Democrats alike over decades, even though neither party was legally bound to do so.
A regulation is created by an agency in order to carry out a law. It only affects the entities regulated by that agency. The agencies that issue regulations are delegated that authority by laws.
A law is created by a legislative body and applies to everyone governed by that legislative body. It’s normally much broader and harder to change than a regulation.
In the U.S., Constitutional law is even harder to change than other laws. There are special requirements for amending the Constitution that make it difficult, but not impossible, to do.
Laws are pass by the legislative branch and can make law anything that is within the scope of that legislative branch to make a law (e.g. state legislatures make laws affecting the whole state, but not outside the state).
Regulations are made by executive branch departments, and only apply to the things that said department is involved in. The ability of a department of make a regulation is an extension of the law (passed by the legislature) that created said department in the first place. Through this regulations can have the force of law even if they weren’t directly created by the legislative branch.
Policies are documents that outline a high level position or goal. The basically direct someone or some organization to do or achieve something.
Laws need to be passed by an elected body. (Federal, state, province, etc depending where you live). Then a government department will write regulations on how the law is to be applied. Policy is a set of guidelines for how to write regulations.
Example: The law may say it’s illegal to park in violation of posted signage. Policy say parking on street should be allowed outside of rush hour. The regulations say on Flower St you can park between 8pm and 8am.
Policy is which you usually do. Regulation is a rule. Law is legally binding created by government.
As a civil servant in Canada, I can explain for me the practicalities of it as I do projects:
We talk casually about “Legs and Regs” – Legislation and Regulations. Then there is policy and procedure.
Legislation is the very high level rules passed by the legislature and cover the broad strokes of what needs to happen, and the penalties that can come from that legislation. These are the laws. These pieces of legislation also identify specific details that can be further refined by Regulation.
Regulations get put in place either by Ministers or sometimes by the Lieutenant governor, and within the boundaries of what is specified in the legislation, they can go into more detail about specifically what might happen in terms of how things are applied.
Policy is then developed at the staff level (and endorsed/approved by execs) to tell us how we implement or carry out the rules given to us by the Legs and Regs.
So, for example, a law or legislation might say “if you drive without a valid licence, you will need to pay a fine”. The Regulation might say “the fine for driving without a valid licence is $500 for the first offence, $750 for a second offence” and so on. Then the policy will say “A valid licence is a licence that is has not passed its expiry date, and has not been put under penalty by this authority, or is not under suspension”. Then the procedure might be “In order to determine if a licence is valid, check in this database, and to collect fines, use this other system to process the payment”.
We can change procedure as part of a project by ourselves, and it just requires signoff by a mid-exec. Policy takes a bit longer to change and will likely require a senior exec to sign off and undergo more review. Regulation will likely require the minister or cabinet to sign, so I’d better assume it’ll take at least a year to get that changed and if it’s something that affects businesses we’re only allowed to have it come in to force two days per year. If it’s legislation that needs to be changed then good luck, it’s not going to happen quickly and likely it’s going to be triggered top down from the political side rather than from the staff side for changes.
Actionably they can, all three, in any combination, carry consequences that lead to loss of rights(imprisonment), loss of money(fines), loss of Access, and loss of ability to earn money (firing, exclusion from participating in a job/career) due to not following the rule of law or regulations and policies in place for the average, individual human
All three can be used in combination to employ legal consequences in conjunction/stackable with eachother as well concluding with extreme maximum punishment with the right mind behind itemizing someone’s activities to fit for it
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