Statutory interpretation is governed by various statutes, the most significant being the Interpretation Act 1978 which was designed to clarify certain ambiguities in the English language as used in statutes, in order to make interpretation of such terms consistent. For instance, it instructs judges to presume that terms in the masculine gender also include the feminine, unless otherwise stated.
Furthermore, until recently, Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689 was held to prevent the courts from using Hansard as an aid in statutory interpretation. This was because the Bill suggests that examining Parliamentary debate in a court setting would consist of a breach of Parliamentary privilege. In Pepper v Hart in 1993, however, Hansard was found to be of some use in clarifying an ambiguity in the Finance Bill of the same year. Following Pepper v Hart, the House of Lords decided that “clear statements made in Parliament concerning the purpose of legislation…may be used by the court”.
The above struggle is an example of how strict the restrictions are upon judges. Only recently have they even been allowed to even look at the debate surrounding the creation of an Act of Parliament. Until this more purposive approach was allowed in the United Kingdom, judges had to follow one of three approaches to statutory interpretation. These are known as the “Rules of Interpretation”
- The Literal Rule
According to this Rule, the words of a statute must be interpreted according to their literal and grammatical meaning. In London and North Eastern Railway Co v Berriman (1946), a widow was not compensated according to the Fatal Accidents Act 1864 because her husband was merely oiling the tracks when the accident took place rather than ‘relaying’ or ‘repairing’ the track, as specified in the act. The Literal Rule presumes that statues are worded in an unambiguous way, and therefore has the advantage of upholding confidence in Parliament’s ability to draft appropriately worded statutes.
- The Golden Rule
If any ambiguity is found in a statute, then the judge must choose the meaning that best fits the situation. For example, in R v Allen (1872) where the word ‘marry’ was found to have two meanings, either being legally bound to a partner in contract or ‘to go through a ceremony of marriage’. The latter meaning was chosen, since the situation involved bigamy in which situation two contracts are simply impossible to form under UK law.
- The Mischief Rule
Here, judges must look to the ‘mischief’ in UK law that a current statute was designed to correct. For example, in Smith v Hughes (1960), the Street Offences Act 1959 was difficult to apply to a situation where prostitutes were soliciting but not in “a street”, as was explicitly condemned in the Act. The court used the mischief rule to prosecute the women, as the Act was taken to have been created to discourage people in public places from being molested by prostitutes, whether it was from the street or from an open window as was the case in Smith v Hughes.
These days, judges in the United Kingdom are moving towards a more purposive approach to statutory interpretation. This is partly under the influence of the European Union and their approaches to interpretation of laws. In other European countries, laws are drafted in much less depth, leaving judges to decide the detailed application in particular cases. Judges look at the wider context of a particular statute before deciding how to apply it in a specific situation, using a wide range of materials.
Intrinsic aids to statutory interpretation include the title of a statute, the preamble, the punctuation, headings and schedules. There are also extrinsic aids to statutory interpretation. As already mentioned, Hansard is now an important extrinsic aid to statutory interpretation. Other extrinsic aids include the Interpretation Act 1978 and also European Union directives and regulations as well as their travaux preparatiores.
Therefore, it is evident that the approach to statutory interpretation is changing to a more contextual and purposive approach. However purposive and contextual the current approach to statutory interpretation may be, nevertheless, judges still remain accountable to Parliament and to the European Union. Indeed, the highest court of all exists in the House of Lords which is itself part of Parliament.
Judges may have more flexibility in interpretation compared to that which they had in the past. However, they simply are not and have never been free to add to or detract from the United Kingdom laws that already exist. Interpreters of legislation, the judges, should never be confused with the legislators themselves. The established system effectively supports the supremacy of an elected Parliament. In my opinion, this is how it should be.
