Legislation

• Preamble:

  • Sometimes appear in older statutes
  • Used to set out parliament's purpose in enacting that statute
  • Modern statutes do not have a preamble or contain a brief one
  • Example: The preamble of the Theft Act 1968 simply states that it is an Act to modernise the law of theft
• Interpretation Section:

  • Example in Theft Act 1968 states that property included 'money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property'
• Headings:

  • Headings between sections of the statute may provide guidance to what parliament was referring to
• Schedule:

  • Part of a statute that appears toward the end
  • Gives more detail on how the provisions of the Act of Parliament are to work in practice
  • Helps interpreting what parliament was aiming to achieve
• Other sections within the act:

  • Helps judges to identify the context
  • Example: Harrow LBC v Shah and Shah 1999 where the courts had to determine if selling a lottery ticket to a minor was a strict liability
  • The section creating the offence did not say but other parts of the statute did
• • In Pepper v Hart 1993, the House of Lords allowed it to be considered to help identify the meanings of words, subject matter, and aims of parliament
  • Judges have said that Hansard should only be used when words are ambiguous
  • Law reform bodies, such as the Law Commission, report to the government on proposed changes to laws identified as being in need of change
  • Traditionally, these cannot be referred to when interpreting the law
  • In the Black-Clawson case 1975, it was used to identify the mischief or gap in the law
• • Law Commission reports are an important external aid to statutory interpretation
• Extrinsic Aids:

  • Documents (but not the statute itself) can help explain the meaning of words in an Act
  • Judges that favour the literal rule frown upon this
  • Dictionaries can be used, but it must be a dictionary written when the statute had passed
  • Hansard is the official documented report of what was said in the debates of parliament when the act was going through the legislative process
  • Traditionally, Hansard could not be referred to when interpreting statutes
• The effect of the Human Rights Act 1998 on Statutory Interpretation