Statutory interpretation

Statutory interpretation is the process by which courts interpret and apply legislation. Some amount of interpretation is often necessary when a case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and a straightforward meaning. But in many cases, there is some ambiguity in the words of the statute that must be resolved by the judge. To find the meanings of statutes, judges use various tools and methods of statutory interpretation, including traditional canons of statutory interpretation, legislative history, and purpose.
In common law jurisdictions, the judiciary may apply rules of statutory interpretation both to legislation enacted by the legislature and to delegated legislation such as administrative agency regulations.
History.
Statutory interpretation first became significant in common law systems, of which historically England is the exemplar. In Roman and civil law, a statute (or code) guides the magistrate, but there is no judicial precedent. In England, Parliament historically failed to enact a comprehensive code of legislation, which is why it was left to the courts to develop the common law; and having decided a case and given reasons for the decision, the decision would become binding on later courts.
Accordingly, a particular interpretation of a statute would also become binding, and it became necessary to introduce a consistent framework for statutory interpretation. In the construction (interpretation) of statutes, the principle aim of the court must be to carry out the "Intention of Parliament", and the English courts developed three main rules (plus some minor ones) to assist them in the task. These were: the mischief rule, the literal rule, and the golden rule.
Statutes may be presumed to incorporate certain components, as Parliament is "presumed" to have intended their inclusion. For example:
Where legislation and case law are in conflict, there is a presumption that legislation takes precedence insofar as there is any inconsistency. In the United Kingdom this principle is known as parliamentary sovereignty; but while Parliament has exclusive jurisdiction to legislate, the courts (mindful of their historic role of having developed the entire system of common law) retain sole jurisdiction to "interpret" statutes.
General principles.
The age old process of application of the enacted law has led to formulation of certain rules of interpretation. According to Cross, "Interpretation is the process by which the courts determine the meaning of a statutory provision for the purpose of applying it to the situation before them," while Salmond calls it "the process by which the courts seek to ascertain the meaning of the legislature through the medium of authoritative forms in which it is expressed". Interpretation of a particular statute depends upon the degree of creativity applied by the judges or the court in the reading of it, employed to achieve some stated end. A statute can be interpreted by using the Golden Rule, the Mischief Rule or the Literal Rule.
Intention of the legislature.
A statute is an edict of the legislature and the conventional way of interpreting a statute is to seek the 'intention' of its maker. It is the judicature's duty to act upon the true intention of the legislature or the mens or sentential legis. The courts have to objectively determine the interpretation with guidance furnished by the accepted principles. If a statutory provision is open to more than one interpretation the court has to choose that interpretation which represents the true intention of the legislature. The function of the courts is only to expound and not to legislate.
Conflict of laws within a federation.
Federal jurisdictions may presume that either federal or local government authority prevails in the absence of a defined rule. In Canada, there are areas of law where provincial governments and the federal government have concurrent jurisdiction. In these cases the federal law is held to be paramount. However, in areas where the Canadian constitution is silent, the federal government does not necessarily have superior jurisdiction. Rather, an area of law that is not expressly mentioned in Canada's Constitution will have to be interpreted to fall under either the federal residual jurisdiction found in the preamble of s. 91—known as the Peace, Order and Good Government clause—or the provinces residual jurisdiction of "Property and Civil Rights" under s. 92(13) of the 1867 Constitution Act. This contrasts with other federal jurisdictions, notably the United States and Australia, where it is presumed that if legislation is not enacted pursuant to a specific provision of the federal Constitution, the states will have authority over the relevant matter in their respective jurisdictions, unless the state's definitions of their statutes conflicts with federally established or recognized rights
United States.
Meaning.
The judiciary interprets how legislation should apply in a particular case as no legislation unambiguously and specifically addresses all matters. Legislation may contain uncertainties for a variety of reasons:
Therefore, the court must try to determine how a statute should be enforced. This requires statutory construction. It is a tenet of statutory construction that the legislature is supreme (assuming constitutionality) when creating law and that the court is merely an interpreter of the law. Nevertheless, in practice, by performing the construction the court can make sweeping changes in the operation of the law.
Moreover, courts must also often view a case's statutory context. While cases occasionally focus on a few key words or phrases, judges may occasionally turn to viewing a case in its whole in order to gain deeper understanding. The totality of the language of a particular case allows the Justices presiding to better consider their rulings when it comes to these key words and phrases.
Statutory interpretation refers to the process by which a court looks at a statute and determines what it means. A statute, which is a bill or law passed by the legislature, imposes obligations and rules on the people. Although legislature makes the Statute, it may be open to interpretation and have ambiguities. Statutory interpretation is the process of resolving those ambiguities and deciding how a particular bill or law will apply in a particular case.
Assume, for example, that a statute mandates that all motor vehicles travelling on a public roadway must be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). If the statute does not define the term "motor vehicles", then that term will have to be interpreted if questions arise in a court of law. A person driving a motorcycle might be pulled over and the police may try to fine him if his motorcycle is not registered with the DMV. If that individual argued to the court that a motorcycle is not a "motor vehicle," then the court would have to interpret the statute to determine what the legislature meant by "motor vehicle" and whether or not the motorcycle fell within that definition and was covered by the statute.
There are numerous rules of statutory interpretation. The first and most important rule is the rule dealing with the statute's plain language. This rule essentially states that the statute means what it says. If, for example, the statute says "motor vehicles", then the court is most likely to construe that the legislation is referring to the broad range of motorised vehicles normally required to travel along roadways and not "aeroplanes" or "bicycles" even though aeroplanes are vehicles propelled by a motor and bicycles may be used on a roadway.
In Australia and in the United States, the courts have consistently stated that the text of the statute is used first, and it is read as it is written, using the ordinary meaning of the words of the statute.
Below are various quotes on this topic from US courts:
Internal and external consistency.
It is presumed that a statute will be interpreted so as to be internally consistent. A particular section of the statute shall not be divorced from the rest of the act. The ejusdem generis (or "eiusdem generis", Latin for "of the same kind") rule applies to resolve the problem of giving meaning to groups of words where one of the words is ambiguous or inherently unclear. The rule results that where "general words follow enumerations of particular classes or persons or things, the general words shall be construed as applicable only to persons or things of the same general nature or kind as those enumerated."
A statute shall not be interpreted so as to be inconsistent with other statutes. Where there is an inconsistency, the judiciary will attempt to provide a harmonious interpretation.
Statements of the legislature.
Legislative bodies themselves may try to influence or assist the courts in interpreting their laws by placing into the legislation itself statements to that effect. These provisions have many different names, but are typically noted as:
In most legislatures internationally, these provisions of the bill simply give the legislature's goals and desired effects of the law, and are considered non substantive and non-enforceable in and of themselves.
However in the case of the European Union, a supranational body, the recitals in Union legislation must specify the reasons the operative provisions were adopted, and if they do not, the legislation is void. This has been interpreted by the courts as giving them a role in statutory interpretation with Klimas, Tadas and Vaiciukaite explaining "recitals in EC law are not considered to have independent legal value, but they can expand an ambiguous provision's scope. They cannot, however, restrict an unambiguous provision's scope, but they can be used to determine the nature of a provision, and this can have a restrictive effect."
Canons.
Also known as canons of construction, canons give common sense guidance to courts in interpreting the meaning of statutes. Most canons emerge from the common law process through the choices of judges. Proponents of the use of canons argue that the canons constrain judges and limit the ability of the courts to legislate from the bench. Critics argue that a judge always has a choice between competing canons that lead to different results, so judicial discretion is only hidden through the use of canons, not reduced.
Textual.
Textual canons are rules of thumb for understanding the words of the text. Some of the canons are still known by their traditional Latin names.
Substantive.
Substantive canons instruct the court to favor interpretations that promote certain values or policy results.
Deference.
Deference canons instruct the court to defer to the interpretation of another institution, such as an administrative agency or Congress. These canons reflect an understanding that the judiciary is not the only branch of government entrusted with constitutional responsibility.
Criticism.
Critics of the use of canons argue that canons impute some sort of "omniscience" to the legislature, suggesting that it is aware of the canons when constructing the laws. In addition, it is argued that the canons give a credence to judges who want to construct the law a certain way, imparting a false sense of justification to their otherwise arbitrary process. In a classic article, Karl Llewellyn argued that every canon had a "counter-canon" that would lead to the opposite interpretation of the statute.
U.S. Courts.
The common textual canons of statutory construction employed in American jurisprudence are: (1) Ejusdem generis -" "of the same kinds, class, or nature," " (2) Expressio unius est exclusio alterius - "the express mention of one thing excludes all others," (3) Noscitur a sociis -" "a word is known by the company it keeps,"(4) "In pari materia - "upon the same matter or subject," and (5) Common, technical, legal, or trade definition.
European perception.
The French philosopher Montesquieu (1689-1755) believed that courts should act as "the mouth of the law", but soon it was found that some interpretation is inevitable. 
Following the German scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779-1861) the four main interpretation methods are:
It is controversial whether there is a hierarchy between interpretation methods. Germans prefer a "grammatical" (literal) interpretation, because the statutory text has a democratic legitimation, and "sensible" interpretations are risky, in particular in view of German history. "Sensible" means different things to different people. The modern common law perception that courts actually "make" law is very different. In a German perception, courts can only "further" develop law ("Rechtsfortbildung").
All of the above methods may seem reasonable: 
The freedom of interpretation varies by area of law. Criminal law and tax law must be interpreted very strictly, and never to the disadvantage of citizens, but liability law requires more elaborate interpretation, because here (usually) both parties are citizens. Here the statute may even be interpreted "contra legem" in exceptional cases, if otherwise a patently unreasonable result would follow.
International treaties.
The interpretation of international treaties is governed by another treaty, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, notably Articles 31–33. Some states (such as the United States) are not a parties to the treaty, but recognize that the Convention is, at least in part, merely a codification of customary international law.
The rule set out in the Convention is essentially that the text of a treaty is decisive unless it either leaves the meaning ambiguous, or obscure, or leads to a result that is manifestly absurd or unreasonable. Recourse to "supplementary means of interpretation" is allowed only in that case, like the preparatory works, also known by the French designation of "travaux préparatoires".
Philosophies.
Over time, various methods of statutory construction have fallen in and out of favor. Some of the better-known rules of construction methods are:
Statutory interpretation methods.
Within the United States, purposivism and textualism are the two most prevalent methods of statutory interpretation.
"Purposivists often focus on the legislative process, taking into account the problem that Congress was trying to solve by enacting the disputed law and asking how the statute accomplished that goal." Purposivists believe in reviewing the processes surrounding the power of the legislative body as stated in the constitution as well as the rational that a "reasonable person conversant with the circumstances underlying enactment would suppress the mischief and advance the remedy" Purposivists would understand statutes by examining "how Congress makes its purposes known, through text and reliable accompanying materials constituting legislative history."
"In contrast to purposivists, textualists focus on the words of a statute, emphasizing text over any unstated purpose." Textualists believe that everything which the courts need in deciding on cases are enumerated in the text of legislative statutes. In other words, if any other purpose was intended by the legislature then it would have been written within the statutes and since it is not written, it implies that no other purpose or meaning was intended. By looking at the statutory structure and hearing the words as they would sound in the mind of a skilled, objectively reasonable user of words, textualists believe that they would respect the constitutional separation of power and best respect legislative supremacy.