KR MANGALAM UNIVERSITY

GURUGRAM

ASSINGMENT
TOPIC: RULES OF STATUTORY INTERPRETATION
SUBJECT: IOS

Submitted to: DR.ARCHANA VASHISHTH

Prof. School of Law

Submitted by: Dheeraj Singh

LLB (H) III Semester
1805230009
INTRODUCTION
There are three main rules to interpret a statute; the literal, golden and mischief rule and also
the integrated approach, known as the purposive approach.

 
Literal rule of interpretation
The plain meaning rule, also known as the literal rule, is one of three rules of statutory
construction traditionally applied by English courts. The other two are the “mischief rule” and
the “golden rule.”

The literal rule of statutory interpretation should be the first rule applied by judges. Under the
literal rule, the words of the statute are given their natural or ordinary meaning and applied
without the judge seeking to put a gloss on the words or seek to make sense of the statute.

Lord Diplock in the Duport Steel v Sirs case (1980) defined the rule:

“Where the meaning of the statutory words is plain and unambiguous it is not then for the judges
to invent fancied ambiguities as an excuse for failing to give effect to it’s plain meaning because
they consider the consequences for doing so would be inexpedient, or even unjust or immoral.”

This definition says that a judge should not deviate from the literal meaning of the words even if
the outcome is unjust. If they do they are creating their own version of how the case should turn
out and the will of parliament is contradicted.

One Example of The Literal Rule was the Fisher v Bell case (1960). Under the offensive
weapons act of 1959, it is an offence to offer certain offensive weapons for sale. Bristol
shopkeeper, James Bell displayed a flick knife in his shop window. When brought to trial it was
concluded that Bell could not be convicted given the literal meaning of the statute. The law of
contract states that having an item in a window is not an intention of sale but is an invitation to
treat. Given the literal meaning of this statute, Bell could not be convicted.

The R V Harris case (1836), where the defendant bit the nose off the victim. The statute stated
the offence was ‘to stab or wound’. Under The Literal Rule, biting is not stabbing, cutting or
wounding (implying the use of an instrument). The defendant was proven not guilty.

Main advantages of The Literal Rule:

1. No scope for the judges own opinions or prejudices to interfere.

2. Respects parliamentary supremacy and upholds separation of power.
3. Encourages drafting precision, promotes certainty and reduces litigation.
There are disadvantages to The Literal Rule.

For example, in the R v Maginnis case (1987), the defendant was charged with possession of a
controlled drug with intent to supply under the misuse of drugs act 1971 (s.5). The defendant
claimed that the drugs belonged to a friend who was picking them up later. The judge stated that
handing the drugs back was supply. The case was upheld on appeal. In his speech at the appeal,
Lord Keith proposed that: “The word ‘supply’ in its ordinary natural meaning, conveys the idea
of furnishing or providing to another something which is wanted or required in order to meet the
wants or requirements of that other.”

Lord Goff dissented saying:

“I do not feel able to say that either the delivery of goods by a depositor to a depositee, or the
redelivery of goods by a depositee to a depositor, can sensibly be described as an act of
supplying goods to another.”

This case shows the main problem with The Literal Rule – that there can be disagreement over
the literal meaning of statutes.

The Literal Rule can create loopholes in law, as shown in the Fisher v Bell (1960) case and the R
v Harris (1960). Similarly, the Partridge v Crittenden (1968) case used a legal loophole.

The defendant placed an advertisement offering two bramble finches for sale (s.6 of protection of
birds act (1954) makes it and offence to sell these birds). The advert was treated as an invitation
to treat, not an offer for sale and the defendant was acquitted.

The Literal Rule can also lead to injustice. One example of this is the. In the London and North
Eastern Railway v Berriman (1946) case a rail worker was killed whilst oiling a track; no
‘stopping man’ had been provided. Under statute, compensation is provided on death of workers
‘replacing or relaying’ track. The statute did not cover oiling and so compensation wasn’t given.
This can undermine public confidence in the law.

The Golden Rule

The rule was defined by Lord Wensleydale in the Grey v Pearson case (1857) as: “The
grammatical and ordinary sense of the words is to be adhered to unless that would lead to some
absurdity or some repugnance or inconsistency with the rest of the instrument in which case the
grammatical and ordinary sense of the words may be modified so as to avoid the absurdity and
inconsistency, but no farther.”

.
It is the modification of the literal rule of interpretation. The literal rule emphasises on the literal
meaning of legal words or words used in the legal context which may often lead to ambiguity
and absurdity. The golden rule tries to avoid anomalous and absurd consequences from arising
from literal interpretation. In view of the same, the grammatical meaning of such words is
usually modified. The court is usually interested in delivering justice and in order to foresee the
consequences of their decisions the golden rule is usually applied. This rule of interpretation
aims at giving effect to the spirit of the law as the mere mechanical and grammatical meaning
may not be sufficient

Whenever the grammatical construction cannot be given without any doubt only then shall the
golden rule of interpretation be applied bearing in mind the consequences of the decision given.
Language of the law is usually an external manifestation of the intention of the legislature
underlying the law for which the golden rule is used. This rule of interpretation is used on the
basis of discretion of the judges on giving due consideration to the consequences of the judgment
given by them. An example of the same is S. 125 of the CrPC which deals with maintenance
given to women. The court while interpreting the term ‘wife’ included those women who have
entered into bigamy, talakshuda women and divorced women. The court has stated that even
though a woman may have relinquished her rights on divorce, she may claim maintenance u/s
125 as she will she be regarded as a ‘wife’ 10 years after such divorce. Further, in the case of
Chandrima Das the courts interpreted that Article 21 shall be available to non-citizens as well as
citizens.

Justice Holmes stated, “A word is not crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of the
living thought and it may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and
the time in which the word is used.”

Further, in the case of Kartar Singh v. S.O. Punjab under the rent control act while interpreting
‘the landlord requires his land for his bona fide own use’, the courts stated that that his own use
would include the even the requirements of the landlord’s son’s use.

The Golden Rule was used in the R v Allen case (1872). In this the defendant was charged with
bigamy (s.57 of offences against the person act 1861) which, under statutes states: ‘whosoever
being married shall marry any other person during the lifetime of the former husband or wife is
guilty of an offence’.

Under The Literal Rule, bigamy would be impossible because civil courts do not recognize
second marriages, so The Golden Rule was applied to determine that the word ‘marry’ should be
seen as ‘to go through ceremony’ and the conviction was upheld.
The main advantage of The Golden Rule is that drafting errors in statutes can be corrected
immediately. This is seen in the R v Allen (1872) case where the loopholes were closed, the
decision was in line with parliament’s intentions and it gave a more just outcome.

A major disadvantage of The Golden Rule is that judges can technically change the law by
changing the meaning of words in statutes. They can, potentially infringing the separation of
powers between legal and legislature.

The Golden Rule won’t help if there is no absurdity in the statute. For example the London and
North Eastern Railway v Berriman (1946) case, where the widow couldn’t get compensation
because the wording of the statute didn’t allow for this circumstance.

Thus, through this rule of interpretation, it becomes evident that, the text of law along with the
context in which it is applied, must be given due consideration.

APPLICATION OF GOLDEN RULE

If the choice is between two interpretations, said Viscount Simon, L.C. in Nokes v. Doncaster
Amalgamated Collieries Ltd. “We should avoid a construction which would reduce the
legislation to futility or the narrower one which would fail to achieve the manifest purpose of the
legislation. We should rather accept the bolder construction based on the view that Parliament
would legislate only for the purpose of bringing about an effective result. Thus, if the language is
capable of more than one interpretation, one ought to discard the literal or natural meaning if it
leads to an unreasonable result, and adopt that interpretation which leads to reasonably practical
results.”

In Nyadar Singh v. Union of India,[xxxii] a restricted construction was given to rule 11 (VI) of
the Central Services (Classification, Appeal and Control) Rules, 1965. This Rule empowers
imposition of “penalty of reduction to a lower time-scale pay, grade post or service.” The
Supreme Court held that a person initially appointed to a higher post and grade of pay scale
cannot be reduced to a lower grade or post. A wider construction if given to the provision, it may
affect the recruitment policy itself for a person directly recruited to a higher post may not have
the requisite qualification for the lower post

In India, there are several good examples where the Supreme Court or High Courts have applied
the Golden Construction of Statutes. Certain confusion one may face when it appears that even
for the literal rule, this rule is named. As golden rule initially starts with the search of the literal
meaning of the provision, and if there is unequivocal meaning, plain and natural and no
repugnancy, an uncertainty of absurdity appears, apply the meaning.
But when there is a possibility of more than one meaning, we have to go further to avoid the
inconvenience by even modifying the language by addition, rejection or substitution of words so
as to make meaning accurate expounding of intention of the legislature.[xxxviii]

In Uttar Pradesh Bhoodan Yagna Samiti v. Brij Kishore [xxxix], the Supreme Court held that
the expression “landless person” used in Section 14 of U.P. Bhoodan Yagna Act, 1953, which
made provision for grant of land to landless persons, was limited to “landless laborers”. A
landless labour is he who is engaged in agriculture but having no agricultural land.

The Court further said that “any landless person” did not include a landless businessman residing
in a city. The object of the Act was to implement the Bhoodan movement, which aimed at
distribution of land to landless labourers who were verged in agriculture. A businessman, though
landless cannot claim the benefit of the Act.

DIFFICULTIES IN THE APPLICATION OF GOLDEN RULE

Lord Moulten in Vacher & Sons v. London Society of Compositor [xlv] had explained the reasons
for adopting caution before application of the golden rule of construction in these words: “There
is a danger that it may generate into a mere judicial criticism of the propriety of the Acts of the
legislature. We have to interpret statutes according to the language used therein, and though
occasionally the respective consequences of two rival interpretations may guide us in our choice
in between them, it can only be where, taking the Act as a whole and viewing it in connection
with the existing state of law at the time of the passing of the Act, we can satisfy ourselves that
the words cannot have been used in the sense the argument points.

“It may sometimes happen that laws made for the benefit of the public at large may come in the
conflict of some individual interest or take away his legal right and cause injustice to him. That is
to say, like public policy, absurdity, uncertainty or repugnance, are very unruly horses.

In State Bank of India v. Shri N. Sundara Money [xlvi], the Supreme Court said that “it is the duty
of all courts of justice, to take care for the general good of the community, that hard cases do not
make bad law. Referring earlier cases the court observed that absurdity should be understood in
the same sense as repugnance that is to say something which would be as absurd with reference
to the other words of the statute as to amount to repugnance

Criticism of Golden Rule

The Golden Approach can be criticized

The United Kingdom Law Commissions commented in their report that:

“There is a tendency in our systems, less evident in some recent decisions of the courts but still
perceptible, to over emphasise the literal meaning of a provision (i.e. the meaning in the light of
its immediate and obvious context) at the expense of the meaning to be derived from other
possible contexts; the latter include the ‘mischief’ or general legislative purpose, as well as any
international obligation of the United Kingdom, which underlie the provision”

They also stated that to place undue emphasis on the literal meaning of words is to “assume an
unattainable perfection in draftsmanship” This was written in 1969 and in the light of more
recent judicial developments, it seems that the courts have shifted somewhat from the literal
approach. Zander contends that: “The main principles of statutory interpretation-the literal rule,
the golden rule and the mischief rule-are all called rules, but this is plainly a misnomer (A
misnomer is a term that suggests an interpretation known to be untrue).

They are not rules in any ordinary sense of the word since they all point to different solutions to
the same problem. Nor is there any indication, either in the so-called rules or elsewhere, as to
which to apply in any given situation. Each of them may be applied but need not be” Zander, in
his more recent book, criticized the golden rule for being silent as to how the court should
proceed if it does find an unacceptable absurdity

1. It suffers from the same difficulties as the literal approach vis a lack of wider contextual
understandings of “meanings.”
2. The idea of “absurdity” covers only a very few cases. Most cases involve situations
where difficult choices have to be made between several fairly plausible arguments, not
situations where the words lead to obvious absurdities.
3. The use of the “absurdity” safety valve can be very erratic as pointed out by Professor
Willis in his famous article, “Statute Interpretation in a Nutshell” (l938) l6 C.B. Rev.l.
Willis at l3-l4:

Mischief Rule
The Mischief Rule is a certain rule that judges can apply in statutory interpretation in order to
discover Parliament’s intention. The application of this rule gives the judge more discretion than
the literal and the golden rule as it allows him to effectively decide on Parliament’s intent. It can
be argued that this undermines Parliament’s supremacy and is undemocratic as it takes law-
making decisions away from the legislature. Legislative intent is determined by examining
secondary sources, such as committee reports, treatises, law review articles and corresponding
statutes. This rule has often been used to resolve ambiguities in cases in which the literal rule
cannot be applied but associated problem is that the fact that this rule helps achieve that the use
of this rule is limited due to Parliamentary intent.

This is a very important rule as far as the Interpretation of Statute is concerned. It is often
referred to as the “rule in Heydon’s Case.. This very important case reported by Lord Coke and
decided by the Barons of the Exchequer in the 16th century laid down the following rules:
That for the sure and true interpretation of all statutes in general, be they penal or beneficial,
restrictive or enlarging of the common law; four things are to be considered –

1)      What was the common law before the passing of the Act?

2)      What was the mischief and defect for which the common law did not provide?

3)      What remedy the Parliament hath resolved and appointed to cure the “disease of the
Commonwealth”.

4)      The true reasons for the remedy.

And then the office of all the Judges is always to make such construction as shall suppress the
mischief and advance the remedy. Before proceeding any further, a word of warning is
appropriate. Uses the exact words – “disease of the Commonwealth” – used byLord Coke in his
report and it is important to bear in mind that words had different meanings. It is necessary to
discover their meaning at the time of writing. From the 14th century to the end of the 17th, the
meaning of disease was lack of ease, disquiet or distress and Commonwealth, of course, meant
the Country.

According to an early case, The Longford (1889) 14 P.D. 34 an Act must be construed as if one
were interpreting it on the day it was passed. Thus, we ask ourselves what the word meant on the
day it was uttered if by analogy we argue that the same can be said of a judgment. The
importance of the mischief rule in criminal law can best be shown by considering examples. An
Act of Parliament will state the purpose for which it was enacted. If we take the case of Parkin v.
Norman[1982] 2 All E.R. 583, (reserved judgment), it can be seen that the court decided that the
Public Order Act 1936 was never designed to deal with homosexual behavior in public toilets.

The long title to the Act reads:

“An Act to prohibit the wearing of uniforms in connexion with political objects and the
maintenance by private persons of associations of military or similar characters; and to make
further provision for the preservation of public order on the occasion of public processions and
meetings and in public places.”

The purposes of the Act and the mischief rule are, therefore, closely connected, and it is very
genuine to look at the long title.
Case Laws

Royal College of Nursing v DHSS

The Royal College of Nursing brought an action challenging the legality of the involvement of
nurses in carrying out abortions. The Offences against the Person Act 1861 makes it an offence
for any person to carry out an abortion. The Abortion Act 1967 provided that it would be an
absolute defence for a medically registered practitioner (i.e. a doctor) to carry out abortions
provided certain conditions were satisfied. Advances in medical science meant surgical abortions
were largely replaced with hormonal abortions and it was common for these to be administered
by nurses it was Held: It was legal for nurses to carry out such abortions. The Act was aimed at
doing away with back street abortions where no medical care was available. The actions of the
nurses were therefore outside the mischief of the Act of 1861 and within the contemplate defence
in the 1967 Act.

Sodra Devi v. Commr. Of Income Tax

By s 16(3) of the Indian Income Tax Act 1922, ‘In computing the total income of any
individual for the purpose of assessment, there shall be included so much of the income of a wife
or minor child of such individual as arises indirectly or directly’ In CIT v Sodra Devi the court
observed that the legislature was guilty of using an ambiguous term. There is no knowing with
certainly as to whether the legislature meant to enact these provisions with reference only to a
male of the species using the words ‘any individual’ or ‘such individual’ in the narrower sense of
the term indicated above or intended to include within the connotation of the words ‘any
individual’ or ‘such individual’ also a female of the species.

Holding the words ‘any individual’ and ‘such individual’ as restricted in their connotation to
mean only the male of the species, the court observed that the evil which was sought to be
remedied was the only resulting from the widespread practice of husbands entering into nominal
partnerships with their wives, and fathers admitting their minor children to the benefits of the
partnerships of which they were members. This evil was sought to be remedied by the Income-
tax Act. The only intention of the legislature in doing so was to include the income derived by
the wife or a minor child, in the computation of the total income of the male assessee, the
husband or the father as the case may be for the purpose of the assessment.

RMDC v. UOI

In RMDC v Union of India the definition of ‘prize competition’ under s 2(d) of the Prize
competition act 1955, was held to be inclusive of only those instances in which no substantive
skill is involved. Thus, those prize competitions in which some skill was required were exempt
from the definition of ‘prize competition’ under s 2(d) of the Act. Hence, in the aforementioned
case, the Supreme Court has applied the Heydon’s Rule in order to suppress the mischief was
intended to be remedied, as against the literal rule which could have covered prize competitions
where no substantial degree of skill was required for success.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Mischief Rule

Advantages:
1)      The Law Commission sees it as a far more satisfactory way of interpreting acts as opposed
to the Golden or Literal rules.

2)      It usually avoids unjust or absurd results in sentencing.

3)      Closes loopholes

4)      Allows the law to develop and adapt to changing needs example Royal College of Nursing
v DHSS

Disadvantages:

1)      It is seen to be out of date as it has been in use since the 16th century, when common law
was the primary source of law and parliamentary supremacy was not established.

2)      It gives too much power to the unelected judiciary which is argued to be undemocratic.

3)      Creates a crime after the event example Smith v Hughes, Elliot v Grey thus infringing the
rule of law.

4)     Gives judges a law making role infringing the separation of powers and Judges can bring
their own views, sense of morality and prejudices to a case example Smith v Hughes, DPP v
Bull.

Conclusion

As it can be seen from the case, mischief rule can be applied differently by different judges. It is
mainly about the discretion and understanding of the person applying it. Though, it as a far more
satisfactory way of interpreting acts as opposed to the Golden or Literal rules. It usually avoids
unjust or absurd results in sentencing but it also seen to be out of date as it has been in use since
the 16th century, when common law was the primary source of law and parliamentary
supremacy was not established. It gives too much power to the unelected judiciary which is
argued to be undemocratic. In the 16th century, the judiciary would often draft acts on behalf of
the king and were therefore well qualified in what mischief the act was meant to remedy.