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Strict construction requires a judge to apply the text only as it is expressly written, i.e., read perfectly literally. This can contradict the commonly-understood meaning of a law. For example, consider a law that specifies "the use of a knife when committing a crime should be punished by ten years in prison."
The rule of lenity, also called the rule of strict construction, is a principle in criminal law that requires a court to interpret an ambiguous or unclear criminal statute in the way that is most favorable to the defendant.
Judicial interpretation is the way in which the judiciary construes the law, particularly constitutional documents, legislation and frequently used vocabulary.This is an important issue in some common law jurisdictions such as the United States, Australia and Canada, because the supreme courts of those nations can overturn laws made by their legislatures via a process called judicial review.
In probate law, the rule is also favored because the testator is typically not around to indicate what interpretation of a will is appropriate. Therefore, it is argued, extrinsic evidence should not be allowed to vary the words used by the testator or their meaning. It can help to provide for consistency in interpretation.
Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is based exclusively on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.
Statutory interpretation is the process by which courts interpret and apply legislation. Some amount of interpretation is often necessary when a case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and a straightforward meaning. But in many cases, there is some ambiguity in the words of the statute that must be resolved by the ...
Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts is a 2012 book by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and lexicographer Bryan A. Garner.Following a foreword written by Frank Easterbrook, then Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Scalia and Garner present textualist principles and canons applicable to the analysis of all legal texts, following by ...
The purposive approach (sometimes referred to as purposivism, [1] purposive construction, [2] purposive interpretation, [3] or the modern principle in construction) [4] is an approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation under which common law courts interpret an enactment (a statute, part of a statute, or a clause of a constitution) within the context of the law's purpose.