information” which are “aggravated by bargaining costs among legislators,
interests groups, and other participants in the process of statutory
enactment”.
414
Consequently statutes contain both “omission and
redundancy”.
415
Given this, judges should not readily resort to this maxim,
because to do so is to distort the agreed policy on which the law is based.
Consistent Use of Words
It is presumed that words are used consistently and therefore that the same
words in a statute bear the same meaning. The presumption of consistency is
also applied where words in a statute are used in delegated legislation or
executive instruments. It is presumed that words in delegated legislation or
executive instrument bear the same sense as they do in their enabling statute.
Interpretation in Context
While words are to be interpreted so as to give them some function, it is also
necessary to interpret words in context. As Viscount Simonds said: “words,
and particularly general words, cannot be read in isolation: their colour and
content are derived from their context”.
416
Statute
Context obviously includes the statute in which the relevant word or phrase is
located. One obvious application is to interpret each word in the light of the
other words in the Act, especially those in its immediate context. If there are
any differences it is necessary to reconcile them. This is the approach because
it is
a "fallacy" to "treat the words of an English sentence as building blocks
whose meaning cannot be affected by the rest of the sentence" because "this is
not the way that language works”.
417
Instead, the construction of a word in a
phrase is sometimes "bound up in the syntactical construction of the phrase in
question”.
418
The point is that the "unit of communication by means of
language is the sentence and not the parts of which it is composed,"
419
so "the
significance of individual words is affected by other words and the syntax as a
whole”.
420
414
Posner (1992) p 530
415
Posner (1992) p 530
416
Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover [1957] AC 436, 461
417
R v Brown [1996] 2 WLR 203, 218, [1996] 1 All ER 545, 560, cited by the High
Court in Collector of Customs v Agfa-Gearet (1997) 141 ALR 59, 64
418
Collector of Customs v Agfa-Gearet (1997) 141 ALR 59, 64
419
R v Brown [1996] 2 WLR 203, 218, [1996] 1 All ER 545, 560, cited by the High
Court in Collector of Customs v Agfa-Gearet (1997) 141 ALR 59, 64
420
R v Brown [1996] 2 WLR 203, 218, [1996] 1 All ER 545, 560, cited by the High
Court in Collector of Customs v Agfa-Gearet (1997) 141 ALR 59, 64
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