[Music] you'll know already that legislation is a really important source of law in the legal system so what I'd like to think about now is once Parliament enacts legislation what happens next in the real world we need to understand legislation what does it say and what does it mean and we need rules around that and knows of the rules of statutory interpretation you might think you beat the devastation everyone will understand what it says and what it means and sometimes that is the case legislation is just that simple anyone who reads it will understand what it says and what it means and therefore what effect it should have however that is not always the case and that can happen for lots of different reasons for example if the underlying concepts are complex and of course the legislation will be and therefore be difficult to understand or the words use in the legislation may be slightly unclear and so it's difficult to understand or it may be that the words can have several different meanings and therefore the breathing is unclear and we need to extract it and so we have rules which help us to understand what does the legislation actually mean and I'll start with a case that you'll come across quite early on in your contract law studies and that's the case of fishroom Bell in the 1960s in this case mr. bell had a shot and there was a piece of legislation in place which said it is an offence to offer for sale offensive weapons and that included flip knives now mr. bell in his shop window had a flip knife for display and the question was was that an offer for sale was he offering for sale an offensive weapon now there are different meanings those words can have offer for sale what does that mean essentially what do you understand that to mean before you learn contract law and after because before you learn contract law you would think well displaying a knife in a shop window is offering it for sale once you study contract law there you'll understand that an offer has a different legal content you need certain requirements for something to be an offer and those won't be fulfilled by simply putting an item in a shop window and so how should the words offer for sale be interpreted in this case well here the judge used the literal rule what's the literal rule this is our first rule of such interpretation the literal rule says what is the literal meaning of the words what are the words literally mean what is the ordinary everyday meaning of those words now it's thought when applying this rule of statutory interpretation that this is really the purest way to figure out the intent of Parliament we're not actually looking at what do the words mean we're looking at what do the words say but that in itself distills what Parliament intended this is thought to be our most basic and pure rule of statutory interpretation and so it's not always easy to distill the ordinary everyday meaning of the words but where it is this is the rule that we should use in this case the judge said the ordinary meaning of the words of a for sale in a legal sense is the contract law meaning and so we must mean an offer with the contract or content and that's what the draftsman of the legislation must have meant and therefore here there was no breach of the legislation there was no offence committed now you may have different ideas about this who do you think legislation is for if you think legislation is for lawyers that's probably the correct decision because lawyers would understand offer in its contract law sense and therefore an offer for sale can be understood in that way if there you think that legislation should be read by anyone and understood any person population should be able to read the legislation and understand it then offer for sale using the contract law sense might make less sense and so the literal whilst it's our most straightforward rule I hope you can see already in this case that there are different ways that you can view that decision so what's the next rule of statutory interpretation it's the golden rule the golden rule is essentially a back up to the literal rule so what might lead to a perverse decision if you use the literal well the golden rule says where the following of the literal rule might lead to an absurdity that's using the words of the case law and absurdity then the judges have an obligation to ascribe an alternative meaning to the words to avoid the absurdity and so it's there really as a back up and I hope you can see as we've looked to each of these rules the judges seem to have more and more involvement in the interpretation of the statute and more and more of a subjective sense comes in so with the literal it be a little bit subjective with the golden rule it can be very subjective what is absurd that really depends on the judge that you have in front of you doesn't it what might that judge think is absurd that may be different to another judge and so we see that a judge's interpretations start to change the course of the legislation legislation is enacted and then it takes on its own life once it's starting to be interrupted by judges the third rule of such interpretation in the traditional sense and the final one in the traditional sense is the mischief rule the mischief rule goes a bit further the judge has a little bit more involvement in the interpretation of the statute here the focus is what was the gap in the law before the legislation was put in place what mischief was this law trying to get out what problem wasn't being addressed by the law and so therefore what was the parliamentary solution to that to put in place this legislation and the judge has to protect that solution so prevent that mischief from occurring and so again we see the judge starts to have more of a role what is a mischief can be quite subjective what was the gap in the law that's something that needs quite a lot of investigation a more modern approach to statue interpretation so a rule that's more emerging in modern times is the purpose of approach now the purpose of approach looks at what is the purpose of the legislation what is the legislation trying to achieve and the judge then gives the legislation and the interpretation that Parliament was trying to achieve and so that means you will override the literal meaning of the words if they don't achieve its intention now this rule really has its roots in European law whilst it was somewhat discussed before the UK became a member of the EU it's really a rule that's only been used in picked-up traction after that time the purpose of approach is used by the Court of Justice of the European Union in European law cases and so judges have become more used to applying it in the UK we're looking at EU cases and now it's much more common to see it used in purely UK cases what are thoughts about the purpose of approach well you might say this is actually the purest form of statue interpretation it really distills the intention of Parliament what is Parliament trying to do the judiciary is protecting that the other side of looking at the purpose of approach is to say actually the judge is going too far it's for Parliament to enact legislation and by using the purpose of approach the judiciary is usurping the role of parliament and so the purpose of approach does have its critics another problem in relation to the purpose of approach is how how do we distill the intention Parliament what can we do to find that out now one of the things that you have to bear in mind is that courts have a limited amount of time time is precious and actually very expensive how much access to materials we want judges to have do we want them to have to look at a large amount of material to distill the attention of Parliament or actually do we want to keep quite type parameters of course we want to give judges the right amount of access they need access to sufficient material to make their decision and so there are quite strict rules around what judges are allowed to look at what you can put before the court in terms of what lawyers might want the judge to consider in making their decision and that's something that you'll come across later in your studies what materials judges can look at but you must bear in mind that balance and also how it informs the purpose of approach [Music] and so I hope that gives you a flavor of some of the rules but also what are some of the internal issues that we need to think about when you're reading legislation think about it what are the different meanings this legislation might have what difficulties might a judge have in interpreting this and also when reading cases look at how is it judge interpreting this are they using something like the literal rule and if they are are they going far enough are they doing enough work to put in place what we would like that legislation to mean or are they doing something much more are they in fact usurping the world of parliament and how do do the more modern forms of statutory interpretation start to encroach on that separation between parliament and the judiciary and our traditional understanding of their relationship [Applause] [Music] you