The government of the United Kingdom is composed of three branches. The three branches are the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The nexus of these three branches of government lies in their positions vis a vis the law. The legislature is tasked with formulating the laws, the executive with executing the law and the judiciary with the task of interpreting the law. This submission will be seeking to dwell on the Judiciary’s function of interpreting the law. The submission will be specifically focusing on the various approaches, rules and other assistance which members of the judiciary use when interpreting UK legislation. However, before proceeding to the crux of this submission, it would be important to highlight the purpose of statutory interpretation. Statutory interpretation can arguably be termed as seeking to serve two purposes. First, the courts as a matter of duty and practice must establish the exact import or meaning of a given piece of statutory legislation before applying it. In other words, a court cannot proceed blindly to apply a given statute to a given set of circumstances without having satisfied itself of the meaning of the statute. Secondly, statutory interpretation is necessary so as to cure any ambiguity in a statute that may have arisen as a result of drafting. Granted, properly drafted pieces of legislation may be capable of more than one interpretation. It is thus the function of the court to apply its mind to this ambiguity and ascribe an interpretation to the statute in question. The interpretation ascribed by the court to the statute in question will serve the purpose of curing the defect that hitherto inherently existed in the statute as a result of it being open to more than one interpretation. In furtherance of these twin objectives, the courts have over time come up with principles to aid them in determining the meaning of statutory legislation. The principles have been broken down into four main classifications. The classifications are: primary rules of statutory interpretation, secondary rules of statutory interpretation, extrinsic aids to statutory interpretation and presumptions.
Primary rules of statutory interpretation, as the name suggests are the rules that the court will first resort to in determining the meaning of a statute. Primary rules have been further classified into the traditional rules of statutory interpretation and the purposive approach to statutory interpretation. The traditional rules of statutory interpretation comprise of three rules namely: the literal rule, the golden rule and the mischief rule. When the court opts for the literal rule of statutory interpretation, it gives a literal interpretation to the words of a statute just as they have been used in the statute. In other words, the court will interpret the statute strictly as per the words used in the statute. The court should not seek to establish what the intention of the legislature was in enacting the statute. In Whiteley v Chappell (1868) LR 4 QB147, the relevant statute provided that it was an offence to impersonate a person who is entitled to vote in an election. The defendant in the case had impersonated a person who although deceased, his name still existed in the electoral register. In acquitting him, the court applied the literal rule of interpretation and held that a deceased person has no right to vote in an election. The defendant had thus not impersonated a person who is entitled to vote in an election. The case of Inland Revenue Commissioners v Hinchy [1960] 1 All ER 505 is also illustrative of the courts’ use of the literal rule of interpretation. The golden rule of interpretation allows the courts to mitigate the harshness or injustice that may result from application of literal rule of interpretation. Such harshness or injustice may arise where application of the literal rule would lead to an absurd outcome. The courts applied the golden rule of interpretation in Keene v Muncaster [1980] RTR 377 and in McMonagle v Westminster City Council [1990] 1 All ER 285 to avoid the absurd result that would have arisen as if the words of the statute had been assigned their plain meaning. The mischief rule is applied by the courts when they seek to establish what mischief the legislature was trying to address in enacting a statute. It is also applied to correct an ambiguity which may have arisen as a result of application of the literal rule of statutory interpretation. Gardiner v Sevenoaks Rural District Council (1950) 66TLR and Smith v Hughes [1960] 1 WLR are illustrative cases of the courts’ application of the mischief rule. The second ambit of the primary rules of statutory interpretation is the purposive approach to statutory interpretation. According to the purposive approach of statutory interpretation, in construing the meaning of a statute, the courts will look at the overall goal that the statute sought to achieve. This overall goal will then be the basis of resolving any ambiguities that may result from application of the literal rule to interpret the statute. In Knowles v Liverpool City Council [1993] 1 WLR 1428, the House of Lords resolved the controversy by adopting the purposive approach to statutory interpretation and looking at the overall purpose of the statute in question.
The second classification of principles of statutory interpretation is the secondary rules of statutory interpretation. Unlike the primary rules of statutory interpretation which are principally concerned with giving meaning to the statute, the secondary rules are concerned with providing more clarity so as be to be able to give meaning to a statute. Secondary rules by and large focus on the language used in the statute. The two principal secondary rules of statutory interpretation are the esjudem generis rule and the Nosciitur a sociis rule. According to the esjudem generis rule, where a general word is used after a series of specific words, then the meaning of that general word is to be construed as per the specific words that have been used before the general word. The case of Powell v Kempton Park Racecourse Co Ltd [1899] AC 143 could be used to illustrate the application of the esjudem generis rule by the courts. On the other hand, the Noscitur a sociis rule provides that in assigning a meaning to a particular word, the court must give due regard to the context in which that word was used. Put differently, the rule enables the court to look at the words used in a statute in relation to the entire statute and not just with strict reference to the particular section of a statute in which the words have been used.
The courts also adopt other approaches to interpretation which are not rules per se. These can be termed as the extrinsic aids to statutory interpretation. Extrinsic aids are tools do not exist within the statute itself but which are nevertheless adopted by the court to help it in its function of ascribing meaning to a particular statute. Such aids include dictionaries, other statutes, judicial precedents, pre-parliamentary materials, parliamentary materials and post parliamentary materials. With regard to other statues, there are statues such as the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Interpretation Act 1978, which spell out how other statutes are to be interpreted. For instance, the Human Rights Act 1998 requires that in interpreting a statute, the courts must ensure that the interpretation they give is in conformity with the rights spelt out in the Human Rights Act. Moreover, the Interpretation Act 1978 assigns meanings to words which are used in statutes. Thus, unless a statute expressly provides for a different interpretation, use of such words shall be construed according to the provisions of the Interpretation Act. Under the doctrine of judicial precedent, where a superior court of record has given an interpretation to a particular statute, this interpretation will be binding to all other subordinate courts in future with regard to the interpretation to assign to the statute in question. Only another superior court of record can depart from precedent and even where this happens, it must provide clear reasons for such departure. The courts may also have regard to the materials that were used in preparation of a statute so as to assign meaning to the statute. Such pre-parliamentary materials may include Law Commissions Reports, Government White Papers, Criminal Law Revision Committee Reports and Royal Commission reports. The courts may also resort to parliamentary material so as to interpret a statute. The primary parliamentary material used is the hansard. In Pepper v Hart [1993] 1 All ER 42, the court enumerated the instances when courts could refer to the hansard so as to interpret a statute. These instances include where there is lack of clarity in the legislation and where the statements to be relied upon lack any ambiguity. The courts also use post-parliamentary material in interpreting a statute. Such post parliamentary material will usually be in the form of publications by the relevant government departments concerning the implementation of particular pieces of legislation that were enacted by the legislature.
Lastly, the courts also use presumptions as an aid to statutory interpretation. The use of presumptions is two fold; first, there are presumptions which have developed over time such that in the absence of express wording to the contrary, the courts will presume the meaning of the statute from how it has generally been construed over time. Secondly, where there is lack of a clear contrary intention in the statute, the courts will adopt the meaning of the statute that is favoured by the presumption and assume that parliament intended that the statute have such meaning. It is however important to note that presumptions are rebuttable. They can be rebutted by showing a clear wording in the statute which is contrary to the presumption. In such circumstances, the court must interpret the statute as per the wording used in the statute. Examples of presumptions include the presumption against retrospective operation of laws as well the presumptions favoring individual liberty.
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