4 Interpretation and it's rules in law..

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
CLASS on Interpretation

INTERPRETATION
• A teacher gave this line to his pupils to
punctuate:
• A woman without her man is nothing.
• All the girls came up with:
• A woman, without her, man is nothing.
• All the boys wrote:
• A woman without her man, is nothing.

STATUTORY INTERPRETATION
• What is it?
• the process by which courts interpret and apply legislation
• Who does it?
• Courts, it is their duty to give effect to Parliament’s intention.
• “Statutes themselves, though manifestly the work of Parliament, often receive more than half their
meaning from judicial decisions.” (A.V. Dicey)
• How is it done?
• In a manner consistent with the legislative intent
• The only rule for the construction of Acts of Parliament is that they should be construed
according to the intent of the Parliament which passed the Act.
• Sussex Peerage Claim (1844)
• Problems*

RULES OF INTERPRETATION
• Are these really binding rules?
• No, these are the preferred approaches utilized by judges at a particular point in time.
• The rules:
• Literal Rule (Literalism)
• Mischief or Purposive Rule
• Golden Rule

THE LITERAL RULE
• This approach requires the court to apply the ordinary English meaning of words
used by Parliament.
• R v Harris (1836)
• The statute provided for an offence when someone ‘unlawfully and maliciously stab, cut or
wound any person’.The court decided that a defendant who bit off the end of the victim’s
nose had not committed the offence.The court held that the words in the statute indicated
that for the offence to be committed some form of instrument had to be used.
• R v Maginnis (1987)
• Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 provides that:
• It is an offence for a person to have a controlled drug in his possession, whether lawfully or not,
with intent to supply it to another …
• The police found a package of cannabis resin in the defendant’s car.The defendant said that the
package did not belong to him, but that it had been left in his car by a friend for collection later.
The defendant was convicted at first instance and appealed against conviction on the ground that
an intention to return………………

THE LITERAL RULE
• …….. the drug to its owner did not amount to an intention to ‘supply’ the drug within
the meaning of the statute. In the House of Lords, the majority, adopting a ‘literal’
approach, held that a person left with drugs intending to return them did have the
necessary intent to ‘supply’. However, a dissenting judgment was given by Lord Goff.
He held that the offence was aimed at drug pushers.The defendant was not a pusher
and should have been charged with a lesser offence of unlawful possession.

GOLDEN RULE
• This is a modification of the literal rule.The judge begins by adopting a literal
interpretation, but if this leads to an ‘absurd’ result the judge may modify the words
to some extent.
• “……... the grammatical and ordinary sense of words is to be adhered to, unless that
would lead to some absurdity, or some repugnance or inconsistency with the rest of
the instrument, in which case the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words may
be modified so as to avoid the absurdity and inconsistency, but no further.”
Grey v Pearson (1857)
• How is it to be decided what is absurd?*
• Example
• Adler v George (1964)

THE MISCHIEF RULE
• The judge takes multiple steps using this approach.
• The first step is to consider the state of the common law before the Act was passed.
• The second is to consider the ‘mischief’ (shortcoming) that the Act was intended to cover.
The judge then interprets the Act in a way that achieves the intended purpose.
• Examples
• Smith v Hughes (1960)
• Street Offences Act 1959 provided that It shall be an offence for a common prostitute to loiter or
solicit in a street or public place for the purposes of prostitution.
• The accused was in a house, tapping on the window to attract the attention of passersbys. She
argued that she was not ‘in the street’. Instead of adopting a literal approach, the court
considered what ‘mischief’ the Act was aimed at.
• Lord Parker CJ held that the Act intended to clean up the streets, to enable people to walk along
the streets without being molested by common prostitutes.

AIDS TO INTERPRETATION
I. Presumptions of interpretation
• Statutes do not have retrospective effect.
Statutes are presumed to be prospective, that
is, to operate only in relation to events which
take place after the Act comes into force.*
• Changes to basic rules of common law must
be clear and explicit otherwise common law
will survive.*

II. GENERAL RULES OF LANGUAGE
1. Ejusdem generis rule
• General words which follow specific words must be read in the light of those
specific words, provided that the specific words are examples of some
particular class (‘genus’).
• Example: An example is the Sunday Observance Act 1677 which provides
that:
“.… no tradesman, artificer, workman, labourer or other person whatsoever
[shall work on Sundays].”

I. Noscitur a sociis
• “a word is known by the company it keeps”
• all words derive their meaning from their immediate context
• Example:
Pengelly v Bell Punch Co Ltd:
• S.28 of the Factories Act 1961 provided that:‘Floors, steps, stairs, passageways and
gangways [must be kept free from obstruction].’
The court held that ‘floors’ did not include areas designed and used for the storage of goods.

III. Intrinsic material
• the long title of the Act, which contains a brief description of the purposes of the Act
• the short title, which is a short name given by Parliament so that the Act can be easily cited
(e.g. the Theft Act 1968)
• a preamble, if it exists (rare in modern Acts). A preamble is used to set out in detail the
reasons for the existence of an Act.They always begin with the word ‘WHEREAS …’
• the enacting sections, which are the substance of the Act, with their subdivisions into
sections and subsections
• marginal notes, which give a brief explanation of the contents of a section
• headings, which give clues as to the contents.

VI. Extrinsic material:
• Reports of debates in Parliament
• Beswick v Beswick [1968] prohibited the courts from looking at reports of parliamentary debates
to help with statutory interpretation
• Pepper v Hart [1993] allowed the courts where
1. the legislation was ambiguous or obscure or the literal meaning led to an absurdity
2. the material relied on or consisted of statements by a minister or other promoter of the Bill, and
3. the statements relied on were clear.
• Reports of Royal Commissions and similar bodies
• Other Materials
• International treaties
• Acts of other Parliaments
• Dictionaries*

IVORY ACT 2018
• https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2018/30/contents

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