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BTEC LAW UNIT 2 - M3 (ACHIEVED)
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- PEARSON (PEARSON)
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THE IMPORTANCE OF STATUTORY INTERPRETATIONIn addition to the information I have provided in P5, I have been asked to create a report
explaining the importance of using statutory interpretation.
Sometimes, judges need to interpret particular statutes because those certain acts might not be
completely clear and may consist of absurdity and obscurity. Also, judges might find it hard to
come up to a decision when there is more than one meaning existent of a specific word included
in an Act. Thus suggesting that, if statutory interpretation wouldn’t exist then is probable that
judges would struggle when they will have to decide their judgements in a case. Also,
interpreting statues is quite necessary if there is bad drafting of a statute and if there are
changes in language, broad terms or unforeseeable developments.
Even though the legislators always try to write in plain English and good grammar, the words
can have loads of meanings therefore it could result in ambiguity or confusing interpretations.
According to issues when interpreting statutes, an example case would be R v Bentham (2003).
Here, a purposive approach had to be applied when s17 of The Firearms Act 1968 had to be
interpreted. The defendant has been accused under the s17 of Firearms Act 2005 which states
that it is an offence to be in possession of an imitation firearm. In our example case, the
defendant went to A’s house to rob him making him believe that he owed the defendant
money. However, A was still lying in bed while D was pointing two fingers at him through his
coat looking as he was holding a gun and asked A for ‘every penny in the house’. Therefore, A
seemed to believe that D was holding an actual gun. Initially, s17 of the Act believed to be in the
interests of the victim and its purpose was to protect from threat of what was thought to be a
weapon. As a result, the defendant was found guilty but due to an appeal in 2005, he was finally
found not guilty as it was stated that someone could not be in possession of his own limbs.
Moreover, there are some reasons that of why judges need to interpret statutes. They might
have to do that because of broad terms, drafting errors or new developments on that statute
and I will be discussing these in more detail.
Firstly, broad terms might be created in order to cover a specific amount of possibilities and
their meaning can be ambiguous. An example of this is a phrase in the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991
where it states ‘any dog of the type as the pit bull terrier’. This has therefore led to a lot of
issues about what ‘type’ means and if it means ‘breed’ or something else.
Secondly, drafting errors occur when a mistake has been made by the Parliamentary draftsman who
drafted that certain bill but that mistake was not acknowledged while going through its passage in
Parliament. However, this incident would possibly occur when a Bill went through multiple changes.
Lastly, new developments means that there may be new changes with an old Act of Parliament thus
showing that the Act might not be appropriate to use in current circumstances. An example of this
situation was shown in the case Royal College of Nursing v DHSS. In that case, the Abortion Act 1967
stated that pregnancy should be terminated by a registered medical practitioner’. This outlines the
fact that only a doctor could perform such a procedure at the time when the Act was enforced. The
interpretation rule that has been applied in this case was the mischief rule – the Act was aimed at
doing away with back street abortions where no medical care was available so therefore the action
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