Understanding Common Law Legislation: Drafting and Interpretation

There are many countries that use and apply the common law, which collectively may be called the common law world. A feature of this world is that nowadays it largely operates through statutes enacted by a country's democratic legislature, and that these mainly fall to be construed according to a uniform system of rules, presumptions, principles, and canons evolved over centuries by common law judges. The statutes subject to this interpretative regime may be called common law statutes. They are the main subject of this book, along with the said uniform system. The book distils and updates within a brief compass the author's published writings on statute law and statutory interpretation.

Introductory

• CHAPTER I :

Basic concepts I: common law statutes; the enactment; legal meaning;factual outline and legal thrust; implied ancillary rules

• CHAPTER II :

Basic Concepts II: opposing constructions; literal, purposive and development Interpretations

• CHAPTER III :

Grammatical and strained meanings

• CHAPTER IV :

Consequential and rectifying constructions and Legal Duties

• CHAPTER V :

Contradictory enactments and updating construction

• CHAPTER VI :

Drafting techniques and the Interpretation Act

• CHAPTER VII :

Transitional provisions and the Cohen question

• CHAPTER VIII :

Words in pairs

• CHAPTER IX :

Rules of interpretation

• CHAPTER X :

Legal Policy

• CHAPTER XI :

Interpretative presumptions

• CHAPTER XII :

Linguistic canons and interpretative technique

• CHAPTER XIII :

The nature of judgment

• CHAPTER XIV :

The nature of discretion

• CHAPTER XV :

The European Union and the HRA

• CHAPTER XVI :

The jurisprudential basis of the common law method

• CHAPTER XVII :

The common law system in America

• CHAPTER XVIII :

Techniques of law Management

Subject Index