The Interpretation of Statutes

A park has a bye-law: “No vehicles in the park.” A cyclist rides in. So does an ambulance, racing to a collapsed jogger. So, on Republic Day, does a war memorial tank mounted on a plinth. The words never change; what a court decides they were for does. Every year, Mumbai University's examiner asks the same underlying question in different clothes: given words that do not answer themselves, how does a court decide what a statute means?

In two minutes

Interpretation is the set of rules and aids courts use to find what a statute means when its words run out of answers on their own — starting with the plain meaning, moving to the mischief the law was passed to cure, and falling back on presumptions when even that leaves a gap.

The rest of this chapter

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