In all these situations the court will try to figure out what the parliament was intending. As part of the judiciary, they are supposed to implement law so it would be wrong for them to make their own decision. Once this is done, then this becomes part of case law, but it will not be the final decision, a higher court may decide it is wrong. But if it was interpreted by a higher court to begin with, then the lower court must always follow that decision.
The Interpretation Act 1978 provides guidance to interpreting legislation. The literal rule is following the literal meaning of words. In was stated in the case of R v City of London Court Judge 1892, ‘if the words of an act are clear, you must follow them, even though they lead to manifest absurdity’. One example of this being used is in the case of Fisher v Bell where the shop keeper was displaying knives. These were illegal to sell. But the courts ruled that he is not selling or offering to sell but inviting to a treat. The advantage of such rule are that judicial interpretation stays minimum but sometimes the decisions may lead to an unjust or confusing decision like in the case of London and North Eastern Railway Co v Berriman, the engineer was doing something similar to repairing so it was unjust to seclude someone who was oiling the track in getting benefits.
The golden rule comes in to practice where if the courts feel the literal rules is giving an illogical outcome that the parliament could not have intended then the judge can use his own interpretation (in the light of the statute). In Maddox v Storer it was an illegal to drive above 30 mph in a vehicle full of 7 people, the defendant had been using a minibus the courts said rather than using the word adapted for it could be changed to suitable for. This is one benefit to the golden rule; it prevents irrationality, in the case of Inco Europe Ltd v First Choice 2000 the House of Lords said that words can be added to statute if the judge feels an obvious error has been made.
Bibliography
Jaqueline Martin, English Legal System 4th edition
Slapper and Kelly, English Legal System 12th edition
Elliott and Quinn, English Legal System, 12th edition
Brock v DPP [1993]3 Q.B.D
City of London Court Judge [1892] 1 QB 273
Fisher v Bell [1964] 1 QB 394
London and North Eastern Railway v Berriman [1946] AC 278
Maddox -v- Storer [1963] 1 QB 451
Inco Europe Ltd v First Choice Distribution [2000] 1 WLR 586
