Contemporary
significance of Legal Maxims in Statutory Construction: Analysis and Comments
Before proceeding further and understanding the
significance of the Legal Maxims in Contemporary Scenario, let us first
understand what exactly Legal Maxims are. I would like to quote James Fitzjames Stephen, one of the
great 19th Century scholars, in this regard.
“It seems to me that legal maxims in general are
little more than pert headings of chapters. They are rather minims than maxims,
for they give not a particularly great but a particularly small amount of
information. As often as not, the exceptions and disqualifications to them are
more important than the so called rules”[i]
Other scholars have been equally sarcastic.[ii]
But there is an element of fun in legal maxims: they
sometimes express surprising insights and these from ancient writers. Though
they will not clinch arguments, they will delight many readers who have a
historical bent.
With this understanding let us understand what
Statutory Construction is in brief. Black’s
Law Dictionary defines Statutory
Construction as follows.
“1. The act or
process of interpreting a statute. 2. Collectively, the principles developed by
courts for interpreting statutes.”[iii]
Our main purpose is to understand the contemporary
significance of legal maxims in statutory construction. We see that it is
important to analyze the value of legal maxims for that we have engaged in this
challenging task. Professor Terry, A distinguished author, describes as
follows.
“It belongs to the class of "extra-legal principles -- which we may call legislative, because they
serve as guides to show how the law ought to be made. ... Much the greater part
of the work of the courts has been done by taking what were really extra-legal principles, of justice or policy
proper for the consideration of the Legislature, treating them as rules of law,
and then, under the pretence -- not always consciously false -- of interpreting them and applying them to
particular cases, making new rules of law based upon them. ... If we ... take
up any collection of legal maxims,
we shall find that many, perhaps most, express principles of legislation rather
than law. ... The familiar maxim,
Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, is another one of the same character.
There cannot be said, I think, to be any general rule of law forbidding a
person to cause damage to another by the manner in which he exercises his own
rights. But the principle expressed in the maxim has been the guiding principle
in the evolution of many more special rules forbidding various kinds of conduct
which are likely to produce harm to others."[iv]
Maxims relating
to the interpretation of written instruments occupy (with the comments upon them) a lot of space in books
relating to statutory interpretation. Yet these maxims, standing alone
and taken as absolute statements, are liable to gross misuse. Most of them are,
at the utmost, only prima facie rules; "good
servants, but bad masters." A rule of construction should
always be understood as containing the saving clause, "unless a contrary intention appear by the instrument."[v]
But, there is reason to believe that the
maxims are making something of a comeback. In the past, the U.S. Supreme Court
has edged steadily away from reliance on legislative history in favor of plain
meaning.[vi]
Moreover, the Court increasingly is willing to defer to statutory language even
when the results appear misguided as a matter of social policy, thus
undermining, although not entirely repudiating, the doctrine that a matter may
be within the letter of a statute yet not be within its spirit.[vii]
All this
enhanced attention to text creates a potentially fertile ground for a revival
of the maxims.
Thus, we see that legal maxims have a lot of
significance. At this juncture, it important to cite Indian Cases. Indian
Courts have been increasing proactive in using the principles of Noscitur
a Sociis and Ejusdem Generis. Noscitur
a Sociis, according to Maxwell,
means that when two or more words which are susceptible of more than one
meaning are coupled together, they are understood to be in their cognate sense,
they take as it were their colors from each other, that is, the more general is
restricted to a sense analogous to a less general. The same rule is thus
interpreted in words and phrases.[viii]
This doctrine has been applied by the Indian Courts
right from 1950’s till date.[ix]
Same is the case with Ejusdem Generis. It has been defined
in Black’s Law Dictionary as
follows.
“A canon of
construction that when a general word or phrase follows a list of specifics, the
general word or phrase will be interpreted to include only items of the same
type as those listed.”[x]
Even this doctrine has not lost its relevance till
date. Although it’s a specific application of the former principle, it still
holds a lot of value.[xi]
There is a very interesting paragraph from a recent
2010 Judgment that I would like to quote. It provides a lot of insight on the
contemporary significance of Legal Maxims. The case in the immediate matter was
related to E- Bicycles and imposition of duty on it. The court heard the
contentions from both the parties regarding this. While giving the final
decision, the court took assistance of legal maxims and decided the case.
“At this juncture, let
us test the above view on the touchstone of general cannons of statutory
constructions. It would not be out of place to mention that the maxims in law are said to be somewhat
like axioms in geometry. They are principles and authorities and part of
general customs and common law of land. These are sorts of legal capsules useful in dispensing
justice. In other word, maxims
can be defined as established principle or of interpretation of statutes. With this understanding, let us turn
to the maxim NOSCITUR A SOCIIS."[xii]
Thus
we see that even till date legal maxims hold great significance. Their
application changes, the context changes, but the maxims remain the same. As it
has been aptly described, “Old Wine in
New Bottle”.
But the fact remains that these maxims must be used
with a great caution for their use could be manipulative and at times
ambiguous. The fact that the great
majority of legal maxims are clothed in the words of a dead language has had,
in some instances, the effect of preventing proper inquiry into their meaning.
This would not have happened if those maxims had been expressed only in the
vernacular.[xiii]
Lord Bacon tells us that he put the
maxims in Latin, because he regarded that language "as the briefest to contrive the rules compendiously, the aptest
for memory, and of the greatest authority and majesty to be vouched and alleged
in argument."[xiv]
No doubt these advantages are entitled to
consideration; but there is the obvious disadvantage that maxims "put in
Latin" will be more liable to be misunderstood by the average lawyer than
by a man of Bacon's scholarship. And although the maxims have now been
translated by modern editors, yet they are still generally cited in their Latin
garb.[xv]
With this I would like to conclude by saying that it should always be remembered that these familiar phrases
are not all of equal value; that some ought to be amended, and others discarded
altogether. Above all, it should be remembered
that these maxims (even the best of them) are only maxims; that they are "not meant to take the place of a
digest;"[xvi] that they are neither definitions nor treatises;[xvii]
that while they are "a convenient currency," yet "they require the test from time to time of a careful
analysis;" and that, in many
instances, they are merely guide-posts pointing to the right road, but not the
road itself.
[i] James Fitzjames
Stephen, History of Criminal Law of
England, 94 n. 1 (1883).
[ii] For a collection of
critical comments, see Garner, A
dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, 552 (2nd Edn. 1995)
[iii] Black’s Law Dictionary, Bryan A. Garner, 8th Edn., 2004.
[iv] 8 Am. Law Rev. 519.
[v] See
Preface to Hawkins on Wills.
[vi] See, United
States v. Ron Pair Enters., 109 S. Ct. 1026, 1030 (1989). Justice
Scalia in particular has advanced this view. See, e.g., Blanchard v. Bergeron,
109 S. Ct. 939, 97 (1989 (Scalia, J., dissenting) ("that the court should
refer to . . . a document issued by a single committee of a single house as the
action of Congress displays the level of unreality that our unrestrained use of
legislative history has attained"); Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 109
S. Ct. 2273, 2296 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in
part) ("it is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of Members of
Congress--who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both
lawful and effective--but rather to give fair and
reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code"); Hirschey v. FERC, 777 F.2d 1, 7-8
(D.C. Cir. 1985) (Scalia, J., dissenting)
("I think it time for courts to become concerned about the fact that
routine deference to the detail of committee reports, and the predictable
expansion in that detail which routine deference has produced, are converting a
system of judicial construction into a system of committee-staff prescription").
For a criticism of excessive reliance on legislative history, see OFFICE OF
LEGAL POL'Y, USING AND MISUSING LEGISLATIVE HISTORY: A RE-EVALUATION OF THE
STATUS OF LEGISLATIVE HISTORY IN STATUTORY INTERPRETATION, REP. TO THE ATT'Y
GEN. (1989)
[vii] See, e.g., Green
v. Bock Laundry Mach. Co., 109 S. Ct. 1981 (1989); TVA v. Hill, 437
U.S. 153, 193-95 (1978). But see Public
Citizen v. United States Dep't of Justice, 109 S. Ct. 2558 (1989) (Court declined to follow the plain meaning of a statute
when doing so would have apparently run counter to the intent of Congress and
raised a constitutional issue).
[viii] See Maxwell: Interpretation of Statutes, 11th
Edn. P.321.
[ix] M.K. Rangnathan v. Govt. of
Madras, AIR 1955 SC 604; Rohit Pulp and Paper mills Ltd. v. Collector
of Central Excise, AIR 1991 SC 754; Samatha v. State of Andhra
Pradesh, AIR 1997 SC 3297; Godfrey Phillips India Ltd. v. State of U.P.,
(2005) 2 SCC 515.
[x] Black’s Law
Dictionary, Bryan A. Garner, 8th Edn., 2004.
[xi] Thakur Amarsinghji v. State of
Rajasthan, AIR 1955 SC 504; Tribhuwan Prakash Nayyar v. Union of India,
AIR 1970 SC 540; Siddeshwari Cotton Mills (P) Ltd. v. Union of India, AIR 1989
SC 1019; Grasim Industried Ltd. v. Collector of Customs, Bombay, AIR
2002 SC 1766.
[xii] R. K. Rim Private
Limited v Commissioner of Sales Tax, Mumbai
and another, Bombay High Court, 6th May
2010.
[xiii] 125 Mass. p. 335. in
reference to the words, "ultra
vires."
[xiv] Preface to Bacon's Maxims of the Law.
[xv] Jeremiah Smith, Use
of Maxims in Jurisprudence, Harvard Law Review, April 25 1895.
[xvi] 5
Law Quarterly Review, 444.
[xvii] 13 Criminal Law
Magazine, 832.
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