Exact Meaning of Statute

Exact meaning of statute

By

S J Tubrazy

Statutes must be intelligibly expressed and practically definite and certain. An act of the Legislature to have the force and effect of law must be intelligibly express and statutes which are too vague to be intelligible are a nullity. Certainty being one of the leading requirements of a statute, a statute in order to be valid must be definite and certain. Anticipated difficulty in application of its provisions affords no reason for declaring a statute invalid where it is not uncertain. Reasonable definiteness and certainty is required in statutes and reasonable certainty is sufficient. Reasonable exactness, and not absolute precision or meticulous or mathematical precision, is required in the drafting of statutes, particularly as regards those dealing with social and economic problems. It is the duty of the Court to find out the true meaning of a statute while interpreting the same. The general rule is that the Courts adopt as uniform an approach as possible to the reading of ambiguous Acts of Parliament which are sometimes imperfect, obscure and vague. The primary rule of interpretation of statutes is that the meaning of the Legislature is to be sought in the actual words used by him which are to be interpreted in their ordinary and natural meanings. The cardinal rule for the construction of Acts of Parliament is that they should be construed according to the intention expressed in the Acts themselves. Where the language of the statute is plain and unambiguous, and conveys a clear and definite meaning, there is no occasion for resorting to the rules of statutory interpretation, and the Court has no right to impose another meaning or to read into its limitations which are not there, based on a prior reasoning as to the probable intention of the Legislature. Court can resort to the proceedings of the Legislature when the language employed is ambiguous.

(Author is practicing banking lawyer in Pakistan)