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The plain meaning rule attempts to guide courts faced with litigation that turns on the meaning of a term not defined by the statute, or on that of a word found within a definition itself. According to the plain meaning rule, absent a contrary definition within the statute, words must be given their plain, ordinary and literal meaning.
The difference between a flood plain and an alluvial plain is: a flood plain represents areas experiencing flooding fairly regularly in the present or recently, whereas an alluvial plain includes areas where a flood plain is now and used to be, or areas which only experience flooding a few times a century. [8] Chengdu Plain, Sichuan
In its most extreme form the plain meaning rule does not look outside of the statutory text at any additional sources to find the legislative intent if the rule is "plain" from the text. Critics of using the plain meaning rule argue that a court may find or not find an ambiguity in a statute depending on the result that a court sees fit.
The plain meaning rule gained popularity during the 18th and 19th centuries as the courts took an increasingly strict view of the words within statutes. Under the plain meaning rule, courts give the words of a statute their natural or ordinary meaning. The plain meaning rule of statutory interpretation should be the first rule applied by judges.
This means that the plain meaning rule (and statutory interpretation as a whole) should only be applied when there is an ambiguity. Because the meaning of words can change over time, scholars and judges typically will recommend using a dictionary to define a term that was published or written around the time the statute was enacted. Technical ...
The term derives from the 16th-century idiom "in plain English", meaning "in clear, straightforward language" [2] as well as the Latin planus ("flat"). Another name for the term, layman's terms, is derived from the idiom "in layman's terms" which refers to language phrased simply enough that a layperson, or common person without expertise on the subject, can understand.
This page was last edited on 9 October 2009, at 03:29 (UTC).; Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may ...
The mischief rule [1] is one of three rules of statutory interpretation traditionally applied by English courts, [2] the other two being the "plain meaning rule" (also known as the "literal rule") and the "golden rule". It is used to determine the exact scope of the "mischief" that the statute in question has set out to remedy, and to guide the ...