An academic wrote that a ‘statute is probably the most repellent form of written expression known to man’1. That was in 1958 when statutes were just starting their takeover of the common law world. Now, there’s hardly a corner of human life unregulated by big complex statutes. It is the rare person who does not prefer reading cases to these legislated beasts. The style of statutes leads some to read the statute last, if at all2. That’s one reason we are to start with the text and not to substitute what others say for that text. Statutes are forensic puzzles aimed at an unknowable future. Solving them has become the ‘most important single aspect of legal practice’3. A law lord once said it was the uncertainty of statutes which made their interpretation ‘so exciting’4. iTip – don’t let any ‘ick factor’ about their style spoil your excitement in solving the puzzles they provoke.
Gordon Brysland – Tax Counsel Network gordon.brysland@ato.gov.au
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Thanks – Ross Carter, Agnes Liu, Patrick Boyd & Jacinta Dharmananda.
Footnotes:
1 Allen Aspects of Justice (284), quoted Kingston (1987) 11 NSWLR 404 (423).
2 cf Greenwood (1956) 350 US 366 (374), Scalia & Garner Reading Law (384).
3 Spigelman Statutory Interpretation & Human Rights (2005) for example.
4 Lord Wilberforce in Maher 14 MULR 468 (509), cf Hart Way to Justice (35).