Statutory Interpretation

Statutory Interpretation is the process which judges use to apply and interpret
the Act of an Parliament, that the reason why its very impotent to study
Statutory Interpretation .
Literal Approach versus Purposive Approach
One
One of the major problems concerning statutory Interpretation is that of whether
the judge in a case should take each word in an Act and Interpret it literally or
whether he/she should go beyond the literal meaning and take more purposive
approach ,accept that words cannot cover all situations and look at the facts of
the case more closely. In English law judges have not been abl;e to agree on
which approach to adopt .However, over the years they have developed three
rules od Interpretation;
The Literal Rule
The Golden Rule
The Mischief Rule
The Literal Rule ,this rule courts will give words their plain, ordinary or liberal
meaning, even if the end result of such an interpretation is undesirable and not
very sensible .This idea was expressed by Lord Esher in R v Judge of the City of
London Court (1892).
The Golden Rule
This rule is a modification of the literal rule. The golden rule starts looking at the
literal meaning but the court is then allowed to arrive at an interpretation which
avoids absurdity.
The Mischief Rule
This rule gives the judge more discretion than the literal or golden rules .The
definition of the mischief rule comes from the Heydons case (1584) where it was
said that there were four points the court should consider. These (couched in the
original language)were
What was the common law before the making of the Act?
What was the mischief and defect for which the common law did not provide?
What was the remedy the Parliament hath resolved and appointed to cure the
disease of the commonwealth?
The true reason of the remedy.
Then the office of all judges is always to make such construction as shall
suppress the mischief and advance the remedy.

Presumptions
The courts will also make certain presumptions about the Law. If the statute
clearly states the opposite, then the presumptions will not apply and it is said
that the presumptions is rebutted.
Unified Approach to interpretation
A judge should start by using the grammatical and ordinary or, where
appropriate, technical meaning of the words in the general context of the
statute.
If the judge considers that this would produce an absurd result, then he apply
any secondary meaning, which are in the statute, and he has a limited power to
add to, alter or ignore words in order to prevent a provision from being
unintelligible, unworkable or absurd.
In applying these rules the judge may resort to the various aids and
presumptions.
The purposive approach
Using this approach, judges will decide what they believe Parliament mean to
achieve. The major exponent of this approach was Lord Denning .In the case of
Magor and St Mellons v Newport CORPORATION (1950).