Statutory interpretation: the literal, golden and mischief rules, the purposive approach, the rules of language, and intrinsic and extrinsic aids to interpretation.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to explain the rules and approaches judges use to interpret statutes, illustrate each with a case, and use the rules of language and aids to interpretation. You should be able to apply them to a given scenario and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

The three rules

The purposive approach

In R (Quintavalle) v Secretary of State for Health the courts read the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act purposively so that it covered embryos created by a technique that did not exist when the Act was passed.

Rules of language and aids

The rules of language help fix meaning from context: ejusdem generis (general words following a list take their meaning from the list, as in Powell v Kempton Park), expressio unius est exclusio alterius (expressing one thing excludes others), and noscitur a sociis (a word is known by the company it keeps).

• Intrinsic aids are found within the Act itself: the long and short titles, the preamble, headings, definition sections and schedules.
• Extrinsic aids are outside the Act: dictionaries, the Interpretation Act 1978, Law Commission reports, and (since Pepper v Hart) Hansard, the official record of parliamentary debate, where the words are ambiguous.

Each rule has strengths and weaknesses that examiners reward. The literal rule respects parliamentary supremacy and gives certainty, but it can produce absurd or unjust results (Whiteley v Chappell, London and North Eastern Railway v Berriman, where an oiler killed while maintaining track was not "relaying or repairing" it) and assumes perfect drafting. The golden rule avoids the worst absurdities but gives judges no clear limit on when to depart from the words. The mischief rule allows the law to address the real problem and produce just outcomes, but it risks judicial law-making by letting unelected judges decide what Parliament intended, raising separation-of-powers concerns. The purposive approach is the most flexible and best suited to modern, complex legislation and to reading statutes compatibly with Convention rights under section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998, but critics say it goes too far in substituting the judge's view of the purpose for the enacted words. A strong evaluation weighs certainty and respect for Parliament against flexibility and justice.

How statutory interpretation is examined

This topic is examined through application questions, where you apply the rules to a scenario, and evaluative questions on the merits of the rules. Examiners reward an accurate case for each rule, correct application to the facts, and a balanced assessment of certainty against flexibility.