Botha, C. (2004).Statutory interpretation: An introduction for students. Pretoria, Juta And Company LTD. Interpretation of statutes is the juridical understanding of legislation, deals with the body of rules and principles used to construct the correct meaning of legislative meaning to be applied in practical situations. Du Plessis explain it as follows: “Statutory interpretation is about construing enacted law-text with reference to and reliance on other law-texts, concretising the text to be construed so as to cater for the exigencies of an actual or hypothesised concrete situation’’ Rules/ theories of statutory interpretation INTRODUCTION The interpretation of statutes, more precisely, the juridical understanding of legal …show more content…
This is used to find out the intention of the legislature (such as the long title of the statute, headings to chapters and sections).3.Should these secondary aids to interpretation prove insufficient to ascertain the intention, the courts will have recourse to the so-called ‘tertiary aids’ to …show more content…
This was evidenced in number of administrative law cases. Then the parliament use its legislative supremacy to avoid that via “ouster clouse”.In 1948 the National Party, won the election, and immediately started implementing the programme of apartheid. The system of parliamentary sovereignty made implementation of the programme relatively easy. However, although the Union Constitution followed the Westminster system of parliamentary sovereignty, the South African legislature was not altogether free of external restraints. Until the adoption of the statute of Westminster in 1931 by the British parliament, the Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865 continued to restrict the sovereignty of the union parliament. The Act prohibited dominion parliaments from legislating extraterritorially or in a manner which had been made applicable to a particular dominion. As one of the British dominions, South Africa was also subject to the provision of the colonial laws validity Act. These external constraints were removed in 1931 by the statute of Westminster, which repealed the Colonial Law Validity Act after 1931, the South African parliament was free to adopt any legislative measures, but still remained bound by the procedures imposed by the entrenched sections of the
... but there must also be some indication in the legislation, its purpose and context showing this intention. The courts’ duty is to ensure that the legislative target is hit and not merely to record that it has been missed, but it must also be careful not to trespass on the separation of powers. If a gap is disclosed in the legislation, the remedy lies in amending the Act.
Originalism, an orthodox principle of legal interpretation, focuses on interpretation pursuant to the original understanding of constitutional words . This incorporates arguments from the ‘text, context, purpose and structure of the constitution’. The originalist method of constitutional in...
Argument: This is where the attorney gives detail of the legal situations of the client, and relies on the primary and secondary authorities (Statsky, pg. 545).
How are the powers of the judicial branch unique among the three branches of government?
Statutory law comes into existence by Congress and the various state legislative bodies that make up another source of law. Courts develop the common law rules from the principles behind the decisions in actual disputes. Common law is the law created by judges when interpreting statutory law. If statutory law conflicts with common law, statutory law will govern because the body of statutory law has expanded greatly since the founding of this nation. This expansion has resulted in a proportionate reduction in the scope and applicability of the common law. However, the common law remains a significant source of legal authority. Even when legislation had been substituted for common law principles, courts often rely on the common law as a guide to interpreting the legislation on the theory that people who drafted the statute intended to codify an existing common law rule.
Parliamentary sovereignty, a core principle of the UK's constitution, essentially states that the Parliament is the ultimate legal authority, which possesses the power to create, modify or end any law. The judiciary cannot question its legislative competence, and a Parliament is not bound by former legislative provisions of earlier Parliaments. The ‘rule of law’ on the other hand, is a constitutional doctrine which primarily governs the operation of the legal system and the manner in which the powers of the state are exercised. However, since the Parliament is capable of making any law whatsoever, the concept of the rule of law poses a contradiction to the principle of parliamentary supremacy, entailing that Parliament is not bound by the Rule of Law, and it can exercise power arbitrarily.
The defendant is an Airlines Company that had 900 employees. The economic crisis followed with monetary crisis gave bad effects to the defendant. They should decrease the number of their airplanes form 9 to 2 airplanes. They also had to do the efficiency on their employees to 700. On the efficiency process, there was an agreement between the defendant and employees representation on October 30 1998. The agreement stated that they would bring Independent Public Accountant to analyze company financial condition. During the process, all side should work on their duty. The Defendant should pay employees’ wage. The agreement was not guarantee that didn’t mean the dispute process was over, but the negotiation still moved on. During the process, there was another agreement between the defendant and several employees. They agreed the finish the disputed process and the employees would get separation pay. Meanwhile, other employees, who were 153 people didn’t agree with that agreement. Because they didn’t agree each other, so the employees gave the case to the “Panitia Penyelesaian Perselisihan Perburuhan Pusat (P4P)”.
of law has proved to be confusing to both juries and judges due to the
The formal and substantive theories of rule of law have been enormously influencing the UK’s Law system. Rule of Law is ‘a treaty or doctrine that describes the extent to which certain features as present within a country.’ Formal theory is that the concept will not be finding the details of law by using the previous judgements. It mainly focuses on how it is presented and the way on how to apply in daily life. The procedure is the major thing that formal theories are considering about. And the formal theories basically do not take the law’s content into consideration. Whereas substantive theory is to show to the general public how the law will be exercised, it is more concerning about the details inside the law and it is the procedures
These parts of the act can be used so long as they do not conflict
In 1948 the National Party took power of South Africa. The all-white minority government began enforcing already existing laws that encouraged segregation and separatism in the non-white majority country. Under these new sanctions apartheid, which literally means a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race, non-whites would be forced to not only go to separate public facilities but would later be force to live on separate lands similar to that of the Native Americans in the United States. Even though there was strong opposition to the new set of laws both from within and form outside the country these outrages and unethical policies remained in effect for almost 50 years
His next five laws are about how law is applied; agencies of the law must enforce the law using fair and equal processes. Therefore is is clear that formal theories focus on only procedures and application. The substantive theory of the rule of law, it is important to note that the rule of law is inherently cumulative, meaning it is concerned with the same principles as the formal theory of the rule of law, however adds to it by focusing on its content, substantive theorist believe that law’s content must be good in order to comply with the rule of law. Like Raz, Lord Bingham, the key advocate for the substantive theory, also has eight principles, however it is only his fourth principle that is substantive - “the law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights’’ It is evident that this principle is about the substance of law, the substantive theory goes further by explaining law must protect individuals and must not require us to breach our human
The strict supremacy of statute over judicial decisions and a tradition of literalism in statutory interpretation, 2. Where no legislation exists, the courts are bound by the doctrine of precedent in accordance with a strict hierarchy of judicial authority, 3. In the absence of a relevant precedent, the judges will be guided by legal principle and reasoning by analogy, and 4. There is a clear way of distinguishing the ratio of a case. A key feature of the unwritten constitution is ‘the separation of powers’.
The rule of law, simply put, is a principle that no one is above the law. This means that there should be no leniency for a person because of peerage, sex, religion or financial standing. England and Wales do not have a written constitution therefore the Rule of Law, which along with the parliamentary Sovereignty was regarded by legal analyst A.C Dicey, as the pillars of the UK Constitution. The Rule of Law was said to be adopted as the “unwritten constitution of Great Britain”.
South Africa really began to suffer when apartheid was written into the law. Apartheid was first introduced in the 1948 election that the Afrikaner National Party won. The plan was to take the already existing segregation and expand it (Wright, 60). Apartheid was a system that segregated South Africa’s population racially and considered non-whites inferior (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”). Apartheid was designed to make it legal for Europeans to dominate economics and politics (“History of South Africa in the apartheid era”).