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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.
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 ...
The Supreme Court Building houses the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States.. The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law in legal cases.
As there is always the danger that a particular interpretation may be the equivalent of making law, some judges prefer to adhere to the law's literal wording. Opponents of the plain meaning rule claim that the rule rests on the erroneous assumption that words have a fixed meaning.
The Supreme Court of Canada first applied this rule of judicial interpretation to Acts of Parliament in 1935, in its ruling in the case of R. v. Dubois. [4] The rule was reaffirmed with respect to federal statutes as subsection 18(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, [5] when the constitution was patriated in 1982.
Political process theory is a theory of judicial interpretation championed by American legal scholar John Hart Ely, which argues that judges should focus on maintaining a well-functioning democratic process and guard against systematic biases in the legislative process. [1]
Judicial power, as contradistinguished from the power of the laws, has no existence. Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of ...
For the purpose of resolving this issue, courts have developed canons of interpretation. The rule of lenity is one such canon. The rule of lenity is one such canon. Implicit in its provisions is the additional burden placed on the prosecution in a criminal case and the protection of individual rights against the powers of the state.