Statutory Interpretation in Doctrine of Judicial Precedent - Essay Example

The judges/courts will explain how the relevant law is applicable in practice to the problems the courts are seized of during the litigation process. The meanings of the words appearing in the statutes of Parliament are interpretable by the judges following Statutory rules and Common law rules. The statutory method consists of Interpretation Act 1978 and Internal or Intrinsic aids while the Common law method consists of literal rule by which courts render plain meaning to the words irrespective of the result, golden rule by which courts adopt the meaning of the words more appealing to common sense in the case of more than one meaning being attributed to the word in question, mischief rule by which the judge has to interpret in the light of knowledge if the law has a defect or mischief, ejusdem generic rule which requires words must be interpreted as a person or thing belonging to the same class or genus, expressio unius est exclusion alterius rule which means that in case of a rule mentioning one or more things, other should be excluded oscitus a soccis rule which requires to follow the contextual meaning of a word in question. Further, there are presumptions and the use of extrinsic material. The presumptions entail that courts can make various assumptions such as act not with retrospective effect, not binding the crown, not altering the common law, restricting personal liberty, and creating criminal liability. The extrinsic materials serve as sources of information. They are International Conventions and Treaties, Law Commission Reports, and Hansard proceedings which once had not been allowed to be used for statutory interpretation.

Judicial precedent is a common law system by which a precedent serves as an authority, principle, or rule established in litigation formerly decided.  This becomes a binding or persuasive precedent for lower courts or tribunals to be followed in deciding future cases with similar facts or issues. The precedent appears in various forms. They are precedent in action that refers to the judge’s speech in a judgment, European Court of Justice (ECJ) since all the English courts are bound by the ECJ concerning European law with effect from 1973, The Supreme Court (formerly House of Lords) as this is the highest domestic court of appeal serving as the judicial authority which the House of Lords enjoyed formerly. Court of appeal whose decisions are binding on the High Court and whose decisions are bound to the Supreme Court, Divisional Courts who are bound by the decisions of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal and High Court which is bound by the decisions of Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and Divisional Court and not by another High court judge.

It would be clear therefore judiciary’s function is not to simply apply the laws but to interpret them and establish binding precedents. It is because there are difficulties in drafting out legislation and there are chances of unintended meanings and ambiguities creeping in the statutes. In many cases, the Parliament’s intent will be very clear in which case it will unambiguously facilitate Court’s interpretation.

Courts are enabled to overrule their own previous decisions through judicial interpretation. In Anderton v Ryan (1985), the House of Lords had interpreted the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 in such a manner making the Act itself ineffective. However, the House of Lords giving credence to academic criticisms of the decision, admitted its errors and overruled its own decision in Anderton v Ryan (1985) while deciding in R v Shivpuri (1986) just after one year. In this, Lord Bridge observed that in cases of ambiguous nature, the strict judicial precedent can be departed as mentioned in the Practice Statement (Judicial Precedent) 1966 1 WLR 1234.