STATUTORY LEGISLATION

Statutory Legislation

Statutory Legislation

Statutory interpretation

Legislations and legal documents are often complex and confusing, so the Legislators always try to be clear and precise on what they are trying to convey. Court often has to take a lot time to determine the meaning of a statute. For the purpose, Courts have to carry out an exercise for statutory interpretation. This achieved by the help of rules and legislations that assist the court in interpreting these legislations. Due to its importance, interpretation considered an art, not another law.

Use of Statutory interpretation

It is a fact that, it is very difficult to interpret and understand legislations for Practitioners, students and all the concerned parties. Legislation sometimes appears to be very narrow or insufficient to properly explain a particular situation. Moreover, Language is also one significant issue faced during interpretation. These problems arise due to the fact that, interpretation of Legislation and Law sometimes requires a judge to explain legislation (Foucault, M, 1977). Legislators are the ones who provide interpretation to different laws and legislation. Judge can only implement the law and cannot create any new law. Confusion arises due to poorly drafted laws and acts. In this case, the court will require reading, analyzing and interpreting the law. This sort of problem had occurred during the case of Adler v George in 1994, where a poorly drafted Act “Official Secrets Act 1920” created problems. The Act made the offence distract forces in the vicinity of Army Base as offense, but the court interpreted the lines of the statute as “in or near the prohibited place”, making a liability on the defendants. Various rules are used by the courts in order to find the intention of parliament and explanation of a statute.

The Literal Rule

In a Literal Rule, court will first analyze the common understanding of a certain situation in accordance to the definition provided in Law. When there is nothing more than a definition, it is given for a particular problem than the court should go for the original meaning of the word and act according to the liberal meaning of the words. Literal Rule is a straightforward process, but often it gives inconclusive and ambiguous results. An example for the implementation of this rule could include the rule given by Fatal Accident Act 1864. It grants a right to railway workers to get compensation, who was killed during the course of work when they were either repairing tracks or relaying it. Those who got killed during their maintenance work would not be compensated according to Liberal Rule (Hunt, A. and Wickham, G, 1994).

The Golden Rule

When the interpretation from Statutory does not give a fair result than the golden rule applied to get a fair and logical result. Court has the right to edit and modify the language of the statute in order to avoid problems (Beck v Smith, 1836). Golden rule also gives power to the judge, to interpret the language of the statutory and give meaning and conclusion which considered ...