55 & 56 Vict. c. 53 (Public Libraries Act, 1892) 56 & 57 Vict. c. 61 (Public Authorities Protection Act, 1893) c. 71 (The Sale of Goods Act, 1893), c. 73 (Local Government Act, 1894) 57 & 58 Vict. c. 30 (The Finance Act, 1894) c. clxxxvii (The Thames Conservancy Act, 1894) c. ccxiii (The London Building Act, 1894), s. 14 58 & 59 Vict. c. 34 (The Colonial Boundaries Act, 1895), s. 1 59 & 60 Vict. c. 14 (The Short Titles Act, 1896), - 636 636 - 636 56 - 245 - 286 249, 396 60 & 61 Vict. c. 40 (Local Government (Joint Committees) Act, 1897)- 433 2 Edw. VII. c. 42 (The Education Act, 1902) - 289 4 Edw. VII. c. 15 (The Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1904)- 424 6 Edw. VII. c. 41 (The Marine Insurance Act, 1906), First Schedule - 212 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION. LEGAL interpretation, I take it, is the ascertainment by legal tribunals of the meaning of the language employed in an instrument submitted to them when such meaning is not at once clearly manifest to persons of ordinary skill and information or is doubtful on the face of it, or when the true legal meaning, according to common law, statute or case law, is disputed by the litigants. Instruments submitted to legal tribunals for interpretation should be interpreted by them in the same way as instruments would be interpreted by liberally cultured persons in general, with, however, this very important saving and exception, that the legal tribunal is bound to conform to or be guided by certain accepted legal authorities, axioms, rules and regulations, e.g., common law maxims, statutes and certain rules established by the reported decisions of the Law Courts, all of which are interposed in order to secure, as far as possible, uniformity of legal interpretation. Legal interpretation is therefore a species of the genus interpretation, or in other words a natural interpretation frequently modified or restrained by artificial rules. This, I think, is the true theory of our system of legal interpretation which has developed and will develop with the advancement of human thought and knowledge, the spirit of the times, and the science of human conduct. It is hardly to be contested that some such system of interpretation is not absolutely necessary to the steady and impartial administration of justice. All judges are not expert philologers, nor are they all masters of even legal logic, nor all of equal clarity of comprehension. Moreover without such a system their legal exegesis might not, and probably would not, be uniform, for does not the saying, Tot homines quot sententiæ, apply to judges? Are not their judgments impressed with their mindprints? The want of such a system as exists would cause great uncertainty to prevail, much confusion and considerable increase of litigation to arise. The strongest and ablest judges have never despised or spurned the help or guidance of authority, or refused to accept such rules of conduct as the well-established cardinal rules of legal interpretation provide. It has indeed been said that the principle, that in the matter of positive law, abstract justice requires or justifies any departure from the established rules of interpretation, is inadmissible. (See per Lord Westbury in Ex parte the Vicar of St. Sepulchre (1864), 33 L. J. Ch. 372, at p. 374.) Bacon, Aph. 46, laid it down that Optima est lex quæ minimum relinquit arbitrio judicis; optimus judex qui minimum sibi, and this aphorism is still approved of in all civilised communities. To disregard the numerous well-established rules of legal interpretation which have hitherto guided the Law Courts in coming to their decisions when interpreting any instrument might be the unsettling of titles to real estate, the disturbance of the enjoyment of property generally and of the received meanings of numberless commonform instruments. Moreover, legal practitioners would be absolutely at sea without a compass in their endeavours to deal professionally with numerous legal and commercial documents; and commercial men themselves would find immense difficulty in safely contracting or endeavouring to conform to the law. When we consider the great length of time which the system of legal interpretation, now guiding our judges and the legal profession, has taken to mature and more or less to perfect itself, the multitude of cases on interpretation reported and digested, and the enormous expense the litigants engaged in such cases have been put to in order to establish the present system, we may well hesitate before we think of abolishing it either in whole or in part, or of merely substituting therefor innumerable reported cases which would only reveal the wide diversity of judicial opinions and lay down no guiding principles or definite doctrines. If the present, a fairly harmonious system, were to be abolished, what possible system-for some system surely there must becould in reason take its place? A fairly settled and definite set of suitable legal rules-the growth of ages, be it remembered-saves the daily repetition of lengthy arguments at the bar on abstract questions of interpretation -a wasting conflict and thereby promotes a far speedier settlement of all questions of interpretation. It is always to be borne in mind that Interest reipublicæ ut sit finis litium. Finally, it is impossible to secure continuity of interpretation in legal administration without clear, well reasoned and long established rules. A better acquaintance with the existing cardinal and root rules of legal interpretation might help our legislators, whether educated or uneducated, to frame and pass fewer of those cryptic and mystic pieces of legislation that do not adorn, though they certainly too often appear on, the statute book, and such rules might help to put an end to the wholesale litigation caused by the attempted solution of such expensive puzzles as are evidenced by far too many cases in the Law Reports. A fruitful source of trouble to legal interpreters is legislation by reference. Our legislators, it is true, are theoretically not bound, as our judges are, by the rules of legal interpretation, but they surely should possess a thorough knowledge of such rules and keep them in mind while legislating. In this connection I cannot do better than cite Mill, who says: "The judge is not called upon to determine what course would be intrinsically the most advisable in the particular case in hand, but only within what rule of law it falls; what the legislature has ordained to be done in the kind of case, and must therefore be presumed to have intended in the individual case. . . . As the judge has laws for his guidance, so the legislator has rules, and maxims of policy; but it would be a manifest error to suppose that the legislator is bound by these maxims in the same manner as the judge is bound by the laws, and that all he has to do is to argue down from them to the particular case, as the judge does from the laws. The legislator is bound to take into consideration the reasons or grounds of the maxims; the judge has nothing to do with those of the law, except so far as a consideration of them may throw light upon the intention of the law-maker, where his words have left it doubtful."-System of Logic, by J. S. Mill, 8th ed., 1872, Vol. II., at p. 547. Some rules of legal interpretation may indeed become obsolete or obsolescent. The necessity of adapting the rules of interpretation "Authority, though it errs like others, The seminal sources of the rules of legal interpretation are the common law and the case law of England (which is the evidence of what is common law); that is to say, the authorities of the law, such as reports, digests, and text books. I therefore commence with CASE LAW, which forms Part I. and upon which all the subjects that follow more or less depend. I then pass on to the various instruments which are governed by rules of legal interpretation. As some of these rules are applicable to All instruments, I make such rules stand first and form Part II. It is advisable, I think, to introduce in section I of this part certain warnings against the danger of accepting broad legal maxims and general legal rules as being perfectly inelastic, or as framed to meet every possible case that may arise in the future. No legal maxim or rule has ever been, nor can, I venture to say, ever be framed to meet every new point that may crop up out of the exigencies of advancing civilization. That more perfect cardinal rules and dominant doctrines of vast scope are yet to be framed is undoubted. To expect that an infallible, complete, and everlasting code of interpretation can be formulated for the interpretation of all human legal documents in the future is of course |