Interpretation of Statutes

Hello and welcome to this essential legal foundation course. This course is going to help you learn and understand the fundamental topic that is going to accompany you for the rest of your life.

Why understanding this topic is necessary for any student of law? Let’s take a simple example of how a single sentence can be interpreted in different ways depending upon the use of the punctuations.

Consider this sentence first without any punctuation.

A woman without her man is nothing.

Apparently, this is a very simple sentence, but this may be subject to analysis depending upon how you read it.

How would you read this sentence?

Let’s put a punctuation in the sentence.

A woman, without her, man is nothing. [This highlights the importance of a woman in a man’s life]

A woman: without her man, is nothing. [This highlights the importance of a man in a woman’s life]

A woman without; her man is nothing. [This is considered more of a literary nature, it is good that a woman is now without her man who was useless.]

Imagine the difficulties that may be presented by arguably the most important piece of writing, i.e., legislation, drafted by expert draftsmen, interpreted by expert judges and argued by eminent lawyers and academicians.

I am sure most of you would be aware of a recent USA case where the employees won the case because of an oxford comma. The state’s law stated

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

1. Agricultural produce;
2. Meat and fish products; and
3. Perishable foods.

Circuit Judge Barron started the judgment with these words, ”For want of a comma, we have this case‘.

The drivers in this case argued that packing covers ‘shipment and distribution‘, both activities and they should be paid overtime pay for both. Previously, a lower court judge had said they are two separate activities and the drivers were outside the overtime law’s protection. The court said since there was no comma after shipment, they are both covered. If there was a comma then they would be two separate activities.

But interpretation is not just about the commas, these are only simplest of the examples. We are going to look at the problems and solutions of interpretation throughout this course.

I am going to teach you this course and leave you with quizzes and exercises which will help you understand this topic.

The subject of Interpretation of Statutes is a fundamental to the understanding of the law. Despite its importance, it is not taught as a separate subject but only as part of a general legal method, which dwindles the importance of this subject, to say the least. I have seen that the students have always felt a need for clarifying two fundamental topics of the legal methodology; Interpretation of statutes and the case law method or the Doctrine of Precedent. This course is one of those two courses, which aim to concentrate upon two of the most fundamental topics that any student should master before he or she carries on the journey of making sense of the parliamentary legislation, case law and the law in general.