General principles Meaning The judiciary interprets how legislation should apply in a particular case as no legislation unambiguously and specifically address all matters. Legislation may contain uncertainties for a variety of reasons: Words are imperfect symbols to communicate intent. They are ambiguous and change in meaning over time. Unforeseen situations are inevitable, and new technologies and cultures make application of existing laws difficult. Uncertainties may be added to the statute in the course of enactment, such as the need for compromise or catering to special interest groups. Therefore, the court must try to determine how a statute should be enforced. This requires statutory construction. It is a tenet of statutory construction that the legislature is supreme (assuming constitutionality) when creating law and that the court is merely an interpreter of the law. Nevertheless in practice, by performing the construction the court can make sweeping changes in the operation of the law. Statutory interpretation refers to the process by which a court looks at a statute and determines what it means. A statute, which is a bill or law passed by the legislature, imposes obligations and rules on the people. Statutes, however, although they make the law, may be open to interpretation and have ambiguities. Statutory interpretation is the process of resolving those ambiguities and deciding how a particular bill or law will apply in a particular case. Assume, for example, that a statute mandates that all motor vehicles travelling on a public roadway must be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). If the statute does not define the compass of the term motor vehicles, then that term will have to be interpreted if questions arise in a court of law. A person driving a motorcycle might be pulled over and the police may try to fine him if his motorcycle is not registered with the DMV. If that individual argued to the court that a motorcycle is not a motor vehicle, then the court would have to interpret the statute to determine what the legislature meant by motor vehicle and whether or not the motorcycle fell within that definition and was covered by the statute. There are numerous rules of statutory interpretation. The first rule and most important rule is the rule dealing with the statutes plain language. This rule essentially states that the statute means what it says. If, for example, the statute says motor vehicles, then the court is most likely to construe that the legislation is referring to the broad range of motorised vehicles normally required to travel along roadways and not aeroplanes or bicycles even though aeroplanes are vehicles propelled by a motor and bicycles may be used on a roadway.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 07:45:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015