Statute Law

10 Key excerpts on "Statute Law"

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  Foundations of Law

  Cases, Commentary and Ethics

  • Ransford Pyle, Carol Bast(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Although the states differ in the extent to which they have codification May refer to the simple process of turning a custom or common law rule into legislation but usually refers to the making of a code, that is, a set of written rules. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Sources of the Law: Legislation 93 codified state law, every state has enacted a complex body of statutes that serves as a principal source of law. The rise of the power of legislatures is reflected in the courts, which now defer to the statutes. Nevertheless, because disputes over the law must ultimately be resolved in the courts, the meaning of legislation is decided by the courts and applied to specific cases. THE NATURE OF LEGISLATION In Chapter 3, legislation was distinguished from judge-made law by its characteristics of “universal application and future effect.” The line drawn between the characteristics of legisla-tion and adjudication has not always been clear. In the past, legislatures often passed special bills to define narrow rights of individuals or local entities, but this practice has always been viewed with suspicion (see the 1851 case of Ponder v. Graham ). When a legislative body nar-rows its focus to resolve a particularized dispute, its actions may be challenged in court as violating the principle of separation of judicial and legislative powers embodied in federal and state constitutions.

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  Thinking about Statutes

  Interpretation, Interaction, Improvement

  • Andrew Burrows(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 a theoretical level in jurisprudence courses or as a relatively small part of the constitutional law syllabus. As Lord Steyn has said, ‘[T]he academic profession and universities have not entirely caught up with the reality that Statute Law is the dominant source of law of our time. ’ 3 And in the words of Professor Neil Duxbury, ‘Generally speaking, Statute Law has been regarded as a dusty and uninviting academic topic – in so far as it has been considered an academic topic at all.’ 4 In these three lectures, I want to rise to the challenge of thinking seriously, and at a practical level, about statutes by examining three central aspects, which, for shorthand, I label interpretation, interaction and improvement. So, in this first lecture, I am looking at statutory interpretation. I should stress at the outset that my focus in these lectures is on statutes – on primary legislation, that is Acts of Parliament 5 – and not on secondary or delegated legislation contained in, for example, statutory instruments. Although 3 Johan Steyn, ‘The Intractable Problem of the Interpretation of Legal Texts’ (2003) 25 Sydney Law Review, 5. 4 Neil Duxbury, Elements of Legislation (Cambridge, 2013) at 64. 5 I confine myself to what are termed ‘public general Acts’. There is a small but declining number of Acts each year that are termed ‘local Acts’. Albeit that we might still say they are passed in the public interest, such local Acts are confined in scope to a limited area or a limited class of people (i.e. they may be local or personal). As regards statutory interpretation, it would appear that local Acts are interpreted in the same way as public general Acts, although there has been an occasional reference to a rule of contra proferentem operating against the promoters of a local Act. See generally Daniel Greenberg, Craies on Legislation (11th edn, Sweet & Maxwell, 2017) paras.

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  The Constitutional Balance

  • John Laws(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Law is the unifying principle of every constitution. Every constitution is made with a set of laws that (i) define the ruler, and in doing so establish the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, and (ii) contain definitions of the powers and duties of the sovereign. A constitution will also generally include (iii) principles for the proper exercise of the sovereign’s powers and duties (and it is at this point, if anywhere, that the constitution is likely to cater for the protection of human rights). These points matter for present purposes because the central place of law as the unifying principle of constitutional government underlines the vital importance of Statute Law 51 2 See my judgment in Thoburn [2003] QB 151. 3 R (on the application of Cart) v Upper Tribunal [2009] EWHC Admin 3052, [2010] 2 WLR 1012. the quality of the foundational principles – reason, fairness and the presumption of liberty – which lift the law above the thin theory: the theory that says that the Rule of Law only requires that State power should be exercised in accordance with promulgated, non-retrospective law made according to established procedures. Those principles are at the heart of the Rule of Law, and integral to the constitutional balance. In our uncodified constitution they are generally shaped by the common law. II. Statute Law I should emphasise that in referring to the common law, I do not intend to connote only those free-standing principles of the law that stand quite apart from the interpretation of statutes. Statute Law has of course itself provided important pillars in the constitutional edifice that are of the first importance: the Act of Union 1707, the legislation that confers and defines the franchise, and the devolu-tion legislation: these go to (i) above: they describe the ruler. The Magna Carta of 1215, the Bill of Rights of 1689 and the European Communities Act 1972 go to (ii): they define, in part, the sovereign’s powers and duties.

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  Parchment, Paper, Pixels

  Law and the Technologies of Communication

  • Peter M. Tiersma(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  At this point, the word statute no longer refers to a legislative decision; a statute is now the text of the proposal or bill that the legislature enacted. In addition, questions regarding whether statutes outlived their makers or might simply disappear through desuetude (lack of use) were put to rest. If a law is simply a decision by its maker or an expression of the sovereign will, then it seems logical that when the sovereign dies, the law dies with him. Once written law becomes autonomous, however, the possibility that the text can survive its maker becomes very real. At least in England, most statutes are now deemed to be perpetual, in the sense that they remain in force until repealed. 92 Custom and oral proclamations can fade away or be forgotten, but written law is far more permanent. Recall also that in the early fifteenth century, it came to be settled that the proper way to enact legislation was for a proposal to be adopted by both Statutes 151 houses of Parliament and to receive the monarch’s assent. The establish-ment of this procedure not only systematized the legislative process, but it also helped determine what was statutory law and what was not. Proposals that had been through this process were statutory law. Any other discus-sions, decisions, or debates in Parliament were not. By the end of the fifteenth century, according to Baker, England was a limited monarchy where even the king was subject to law. Similar to modern procedure, bills could be produced in either house of Parliament, usually received three readings, and were debated. They were not drawn as petitions but were verbatim texts of proposed statutes. 93 Thus, statutes gradually became textualized during the course of the fourteenth and especially the fifteenth century. They became increasingly autonomous. The writing containing a statute was no longer just a record of what Parliament had enacted into law; it became the law itself.

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  Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1

  Rules and Order

  • F. A. Hayek(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  thesis to describe such ‘set’ law.

  Because the chief activity of all legislatures has always been the direction of government, it was generally true that ‘for lawyer’s law Parliament has neither time nor taste’.5 It would not have mattered if this had led only to lawyer’s law being neglected by the legislatures and its development left to the courts. But it often led to the lawyer’s law being changed incidentally and even inadvertently in the course of decisions on governmental measures and therefore in the service of particular purposes. Any decision of the legislature which touches on matters regulated by the nomos will, at least for the case in hand, alter and supersede that law. As a governing body the legislature is not bound by any law, and what it says concerning particular matters has the same force as a general rule and will supersede any such existing rule.

  The great majority of the resolutions passed by representative assemblies do not of course lay down rules of just conduct but direct measures of government. This was probably so at all times.6 Of British legislation it could be said in 1901: ‘nine-tenths of each annual volume of statutes are concerned with what may be called administrative law; and an analysis of the content of the General Acts during the last four centuries would probably show a similar proportion.’7

  The difference in meaning between ‘law’ as it is applied to the nomos and ‘law’ as it is used for all the other theseis which emerge from legislation, comes out most clearly if we consider how differently the ‘law’ relates to its application in the two cases. A rule of conduct cannot be ‘carried out’ or ‘executed’ as one carries out an instruction. One can obey the former or enforce obedience to it; but a rule of conduct merely limits the range of permitted action and usually does not determine a particular action; and what it prescribes is never accomplished but remains a standing obligation on all. Whenever we speak of ‘carrying out a law’ we mean by the term ‘law’ not a nomos but a thesis

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  American common law and the principle nullum crimen sine lege

  • Stanislaw Pomorski(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2 THE COMMON LAW AND STATUTORY LAW Since the common law and legislation are the two main sources of law it is essential to investigate their mutual rela-tionship. The interrelation of these two sources of law is re-flected in a number of various ways; what we are interested in however are the ways in which they both compete with and complement each other. The common law will be discussed further from the vantage point of its significance for statu-tory construction. THE COMPLEMENTARY RELATIONSHIP The common law is acknowledged as a broader and histori-cally older source of law than the legislation. Therefore in the absence of a legislative decision the common law is imperative. 1 Although the role of legislation is rapidly increasing and, consequently that of the common law decreasing, 2 still the legislation is subject to serious fluctuations either because some regulations are repealed or declared unconstitutional. In such cases the repealed statutes are replaced by earlier common law rules. 3 Therefore it may be said that a common law rule even ousted by legislation, is not dead, rather (if this 1 J. G. Sutherland, Statutes and Statutory Constructions, 3rd ed., Chicago, 1943, Vol. III, p. 1. 2 Ibidem, p. 42. 3 Ibidem, p. 4. Compare also People v. Davis, 1 111. 2d 597 (1954); State ex rel. Rich v. Idaho Power Co., 81 Idaho 487, 346 P. 2d 596 (1959). 6 American Common Law 71 metaphor may be used) it falls into lethargy and, in some circumstances, may come back to active life. THE COMPETITIVE RELATIONSHIP The legislator can change or derogate the common law. 4 What happens if a statute coincides or collides with a common law rule? Is the statute decisive as a norm of a higher order? The conclusion seems obvious: since a legislative norm holds, higher rank than a common law* rule the former should be accepted in case of conflict.

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  Organisations and the Business Environment

  • Tom Craig, David Campbell(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  After a sharp exchange of opinions over the newly replaced garden fence, the next-door neighbour produces a gun and proceeds to shoot the author. By fortunate happenstance, the bullet penetrates the author’s leg, which, whilst painful, is not a life-threatening wound. After the police had been summoned to the scene and reported back, the CPS decides to bring a criminal case against the neighbour. The state considers a shooting to be of sufficient seriousness that it (the state) should bring the case against the neighbour, even although it is the author who has been shot.

  The legal system employs different terminology to describe the various people and processes involved in these two areas of law (Table 14.1 ).

  Table 14.1 Criminal and civil law terminology

  Criminal law	Civil law
  Cases are referred to as R v. Smith (or the Crown v. Smith)	Cases are referred as Smith v. Jones (two private parties in dispute)
  The Crown initiates the proceedings	The plaintiff initiates the proceedings
  The Crown prosecutes	The plaintiff sues
  The accused is prosecuted	The person sued is the defendant
  The accused is convicted of a crime	The defendant is found liable
  If convicted, the accused is punished or penalised	If found liable, the defendant is required to remedy or to make reparations

  Statute Law and Common Law

  The difference between statute and common law is their respective origins. We saw in Chapter 8 that some laws are made in the state’s legislature which in the UK comprises Parliament (the Houses of Commons and Lords) and the monarchy. Laws produced by this mechanism are called Statute Laws. As Acts of Parliament, they are written down in statute in documents called legislation or statutory instruments.

  In contrast, common laws, which are no less enforceable than Statute Laws, are not written down as such. Common laws, which comprise the majority of laws in most modern democracies, are the result of (in the case of UK common laws) over 800 years of legal interpretation by the learned members of the judiciary. Unlike Statute Law, common law tends to evolve and change over time as members of the judiciary reinterpret ancient forms of action

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  Administrative Law in a Changing State

  Essays in Honour of Mark Aronson

  • Linda Pearson, Carol Harlow Harlow KC, Michael Taggart, Linda Pearson, Carol Harlow Harlow KC, Michael Taggart, Linda Pearson, Carol Harlow, Michael Taggart(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  I will also highlight areas in which the Supreme Court has required a more statutory focus as a matter of contrast with the common law aspects of administrative law and to illustrate that the court has not provided or even attempted to provide a principled justification for its continued use of administrative common law. Lastly, this essay shows that the courts have not provided a method for choosing between a statutory or common law method in any particular doctrinal area. A clarification of the term ‘common law’ is in order at this point. While originally ‘common law’ may have referred to a body of law thought to exist in common across jurisdictions under generally accepted standards of legal reasoning, I use the term here to distinguish Statute Law made by legislators from case law made by courts. In the US, it is understood that each state has its own common law, crafted by its courts under the supervision of the state supreme court, subject only to the supremacy of federal statutory and constitutional law. 3 In many situations, including administrative law, courts in the US use statutes (and constitutional text) as jumping-off points for a degree of creativity beyond that expected of a court engaged in construction and application of an authoritative text. These courts apply a common law methodology in two separate but related senses. The first sense is that courts often make administrative law in areas ostensibly governed by the APA with little or no regard for the actual language or intent of the statute. Second, this law is then applied using the common law method of elaboration and development, so that 2 See The Judiciary Act 1789, § 14, current version codified at 28 USC § 651.

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  British Overseas Territories Law

  • Ian Hendry, Susan Dickson(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  1 1884 c 31. 8 Sources of Law T HE BODY OF law in force in each British overseas territory is distinct and unique to that territory. This chapter examines the sources of law in the ter-ritories in necessarily general terms. The Annex contains information about the sources of law in each individual territory. Broadly speaking, the law in force in each territory consists of Statute Law, whether made locally or in the United Kingdom (and exceptionally elsewhere), the common law and rules of equity of England to the extent applicable in the territory, and juris-prudence resulting from judicial decisions. Each of these sources of law is considered in turn. Statute Law The corpus of Statute Law in force in any territory consists of legislation enacted or made in the United Kingdom and legislation enacted by the local legislature of the territory, and exceptionally legislation made elsewhere. Some UK statutes apply directly, but others are incorporated or imported into the law of the territory by one means or another. A. Legislation Enacted or Made in the United Kingdom 1. Acts of Parliament Acts of the UK Parliament may apply to a territory expressly or by necessary intend-ment. Otherwise they do not. Modern practice is to make express provision. It is therefore necessary to examine the terms of each Act to determine whether it extends to one or more territories. Few Acts of Parliament are in practice extended to the territories. Those that apply to all usually deal with matters that require uniform treatment throughout British territory. Some old Acts are still important and applied from time to time, such as the Colonial Prisoners Removal Act 1884. 1 Recent important examples are 146 Sources of Law 2 1981 c 61: see s 53(5). 3 2002 c 8: see s 8(4).

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  Getting Started in Business Law

  • Paul Bates(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Goodfellow Publishers

    (Publisher)

  † Local custom – a minor source of law and a bit of an annoyance for our purposes. Although certain old customs my still exist in some localities, Getting Started in Business Law 14 they really shouldn’t concern us too much as you’ll never be examined on them. Every student seems to have some story about how, for example, an old law still exists making it an offence for an MP to wear armour in the Houses of Parliament. A common story offered by students is that it is lawful to urinate in a policeman’s helmet if you are pregnant – it isn’t lawful in any circumstances – much as we might like it to be. Please note that the last three sources of law above really are minor and in a business studies course you will not be asked directly about these. However, it is possible that you could be asked in a multiple-choice exam whether any of the three are a major source of English law. They are not. We will take the major sources one by one and see how they fit into your business law course. Acts of Parliament – Legislation – Statute Law All three of the above terms mean the same thing and are completely inter-changeable. Not only are they interchangeable, I suggest you practice using these terms interchangeably. Although you could use the term ‘statute’, for example, all the way through an essay or in an exam, I think it’s better, to ‘ring the changes’ a little bit. That way you get a little less bored and so will the person who has to mark your work. Remember that the average business law lecturer may well have to mark hundreds of similar pieces of work. Believe me, this can get a little tedious after the first couple of hundred scripts. So, the more you can do to lighten up the life of the marker, the better we’ll all feel. In the following paragraphs I am going to use all three of these terms to show you how it’s done. An Act of Parliament can be written with or without capital letters. Using capitals you can give an impression of your knowledge of how important they are.

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