Law Express: English Legal System

Emily Finch, Stefan Fafinski

• Publisher: Pearson
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781292295442
• Edition: 8
• Topic: Diritto
• Subtopic: Didattica in ambito legale

Revise with the help of the UK's bestselling law revision series.

Designed for students, this book will help you:

• Understand how to review essential cases, statutes, and legal terms
  
  

• Learn how to assess and approach the subject by using expert advice
  
  

• Learn how to lead further discussions
  
  

Find additional support on our Law Express companion website, which contains a host of extra resources to provide you with pre-exam guidance.

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Emily Finch and Stefan Fafinski are authors of a number of bestselling and student-friendly resources.

1

Legislation and its interpretation

Revision checklist

Essential points you should know:

• The process by which legislation comes into being
• The distinction between statutes and delegated legislation
• Why interpretation of legislation is necessary
• Each of the ‘rules’ of statutory interpretation

Topic map

Long Description

The illustration starts with the title, legislation and its interpretation. It branches into the Elements of legislation and statutory interpretation.

1. The elements of legislation branches into Statue law and Delegated legislation. Statue of law again branches into Creation of statutes, Impact of the Human Rights Act 19 98, Validity of statutes, and Statute law and European law. Delegated legislation branches into Control of delegated legislation by the courts, Advantages and disadvantages.

2. The elements of statutory interpretation branches into Why is it needed, the rules of statutory interpretation, rules of language, presumptions, intrinsic aids to interpretation, extrinsic aids to interpretation, the purposive approach, the teleological approach, and statutory interpretation and the Human Rights Act 19 88. The rules of statutory interpretation further divides into three parts, the literal rule, the golden rule, and the mischief rule. Rules of language further divides into Ejusdem generis, Noscitur a sociis, and Expressio unius, e s t exclusio alterius.

A printable version of this topic map is available from go.pearson.com/uk/lawexpress

Introduction

Legislation is the primary source of English law; it is interpreted and applied by the courts.

This chapter deals with legislation and its interpretation. An understanding of how legislation is made and how it is interpreted by the courts is an essential legal skill. Remember that virtually every legal topic will be governed in part by legislation, so the ability to analyse legislation critically will be relevant to every legal topic you study and revise, not just in isolation as a topic in the study of the English legal system. Statutory interpretation is also a popular topic for examiners as, unlike some other topics, it lends itself equally well to both problem and essay-type questions. Therefore, as you work through this chapter, think how you might use the material in both an essay and a problem situation.

Assessment advice

Legislation and its interpretation is a topic that lends itself to both essay and problem questions.

Essay questions

Essay questions in this area will tend to require a good level of description of either the legislative process or the rules of interpretation. Remember, where you can, to illustrate your description with appropriate examples from case law. As with all essay questions, your answer will stand out if you can use the description to support an in-depth analysis of the question; a merely descriptive answer (however thorough) is unlikely to achieve high marks.

Problem questions

Problem questions on statutory interpretation will usually involve analysis of one or more provisions of a piece of legislation. This could be a real statute or a piece of fictitious legislation made up to fit the particular points that the examiner is trying to bring out. It is important to be methodical and meticulous; remember to consider each of the rules, approaches and aids to interpretation in turn, even if their use seems inappropriate. Remember that the marker can only evaluate what you write down. Therefore, if you think that, for example, the literal rule would not help since it would produce a stupid outcome then say so, rather than just discounting it in your mind and moving on.

Legislation

Legislation is a broad term which covers not only statutes (i.e. Acts of Parliament) but other types of legislation such as delegated legislation, covered later in this chapter (and sometimes called subordinate legislation) and European legislation (see Chapter 2).

Statute law

Parliament passes legislation in the form of statutes or Acts of Parliament. Such Acts will often begin as either a Public Bill, a Private Bill or a Private Member’s Bill. Bills can be introduced in the House of Commons or, less frequently, in the House of Lords.

Public Bills	Private Bills	Private Member’s Bills
Introduced by the government as part of its programme of legislation	Introduced for the benefit of particular individuals, groups of people, institutions or a particular locality	Non-government Bills introduced by MPs of either House
Affect the public as a whole	Often fail to become law because of insufficient time in a particular parliamentary session	Often deal with relatively narrow issues
e.g. Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019	e.g. University of London Act 2018

You may also encounter hybrid bills which contain both public and private elements (e.g. High Speed Rail (London–West Midlands) Act 2017) and money bills which are purely financial.

Statute law may also be passed to consolidate or co...