Aids to construction

In attempting to decide upon the precise meaning of any statute, judges use well established rules of interpretation, of which there are three primary ones, together witha variety of other secondary aids to construction

 The rules of statutory interpretation are as follows:

• Intrinsic assistance

This is help which is actually derived from the statute which is the object of interpretation. The judge uses the full statute to understand the meaning of a particular part of it. Assistance may be found from various parts of the statute, such as: the title, long or short; any preamble, which is a statement preceding the actual provisions of the Act; and schedules, which appear as detailed additions at the end of the Act. Section headings or marginal notes may also be considered, where they exist.

• Extrinsic assistance

Sources outside of the Act itself may, on occasion, be resorted to in determining the meaning of legislation. For example, judges have always been entitled to refer to dictionaries in order to find the meaning of non-legal words. The Interpretation Act 1978 is also available for consultation with regard to the meaning of particular words generally used in statutes. Judges are also allowed to use extrinsic sources to determine the mischief at which particular legislation is aimed. For example, they are able to examine earlier statutes and they have been entitled for some time to look at Law Commission reports, Royal Commission reports and the reports of other official commissions.  Until fairly recently, Hansard, the verbatim report of parliamentary debate, literally remained a closed book to the courts. In Pepper v Hart however, the House of Lords decided to overturn the previous rule. In a majority decision, it was held that, where the precise meaning of legislation was uncertain or ambiguous, or where the literal meaning of an Act would lead to a manifest absurdity, the courts could refer to Hansard’s Reports of Parliamentary Debates and Proceedings as an aid to construing the meaning of the legislation.  The operation of the principle in Pepper v Hart was extended in Three Rivers DC v Bank of England to cover situations where the legislation under question was not in itself ambiguous but might be ineffective in its intention to give effect to some particular EC directive. Applying the wider powers of interpretation open to it in such circumstances, the court held that it was permissible to refer to Hansard in order to determine the actual purpose of the statute.  The Pepper v Hart principle only applies to statements made by ministers at the time of the passage of legislation, and the courts have declined to extend it to cover situations where ministers subsequently make some statement as to what they consider the effect of a particular Act to be  v BMI

Books of authority

In the very unusual situation of a court being unable to locate a precise or analogous precedent, it may refer to legal textbooks for guidance. Such books are subdivided, depending on when they were written. In strict terms, only certain works are actually treated as authoritative sources of law. Legal works produced after Blackstone’s Commentaries of 1765 are considered to be of recent origin and, although they cannot be treated as authoritative sources, the courts may consider what the most eminent works by accepted experts in particular fields have said in order to help determine what the law is or should be.