Interpretation of Statutes

This renowned work on Interpretation of Statutes is an intelligent combination of description and analysis. It captures the latest developments and also analyses how these developments have contributed to the theory and practice of interpretation.

The book firstly situates the process of interpretation within the institutional relationship subsisting between the Legislature, the Executive, and the Court.

Another part examines how rules of interpretation change when the context alters. Thus, a penal statute is read differently from a welfare or tax statute. And rules which hold good for statutes do not apply to the interpretation of the Constitution. Courts are not just guided by the intention of the legislature or technical rules of interpretation but also by how a word, phrase or issue has been addressed in the past by earlier courts. Consequently, the theory of precedents and its impact on statutory interpretation has been analytically studied in the last part of the book.

Key Features:

• Addresses the various dimensions of interpretation by looking at it from the lens of institutional relationships, the various parts of a statute, the technical rules, the statutory context and the influence of precedents

• Contains an analytical update of the latest developments 

• Records the reiterations of the law in tabular form and does a detailed contextual analysis of all significant judicial decisions

• Provides materials for future forensic strategies by recording the arguments of lawyers and how courts responded to them.

• Special attention has been devoted to split judicial decisions as the foment points to the possibilities of the law.