Rules of interpretation of Statutes — Literal, Mischief and Golden rule of interpretation

A park near your college puts up a board: “No cycles, scooters, motorcycles or other vehicles.” A man wheels in a child’s pram. Another drives in an ambulance. Has either broken the rule? Nobody on earth wrote that board with prams or ambulances in mind, yet the security guard has to decide. That is what a court does with every statute, every day, and the rules of interpretation are the method it uses to decide fairly.

In two minutes

Interpretation is the court’s method of finding what a statute means when its words meet a real dispute; the three primary rules are the literal rule (words in their ordinary sense), the mischief rule (the defect the Act was meant to cure) and the golden rule (depart from the literal meaning only as far as needed to avoid absurdity), and they are supported by subsidiary rules such as noscitur a sociis, ejusdem generis and reddendo singula singulis.

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