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Legislative Intent And Statutory Interpretation In England And The United States: An Assessment Of The Impact Of Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy
Legislative Intent And Statutory Interpretation In England And The United States: An Assessment Of The Impact Of Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Statutory interpretation is the process of discerning the meaning of legislation, and U.S. law has permitted courts to find meaning through a variety of often contradictory interpretive approaches. As a result, U.S. litigants often are uncertain about the interpretive approach a court will apply to a statute, even though the choice of the interpretive approach may determine the outcome of the litigation. Until the recent decision in Pepper (Inspector of Taxes) v. Hart, English approaches to statutory interpretation were more circumscribed because English courts foreclosed the intentionalist approach. This Article considers the impact that Pepper has had on statutory …
An American Lawyer's Reflections On Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy
An American Lawyer's Reflections On Pepper V. Hart, Michael P. Healy
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Pepper v. Hart gave American lawyers a number of insights into the English law of statutory interpretation. For example, English law as described by the case was not as tidy as had been thought. To be sure, the case does state what Americans had believed was true about English law: “[u]nder present law, there is a general rule that references to parliamentary material as an aid to statutory construction is not permissible (the exclusionary rule).” Notwithstanding that rule, however, Pepper recognized that the rule of exclusion had an important and long-standing exception. This exception applies when the legislative materials identify …