Relationship With The Common Law
When first enacted, the Act codified the common law in some cases. For example, there is a presumption at common law that parliament intends its legislation to operate only on persons and matters within its territory; the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (Cth) repeated that presumption at section 21 (b). If an act was silent on the question, then s. 21 (b) operated to confine the act in its territorial reach. However, parliament may override the presumption and the section to give extraterritorial operation to the enactment by express words or "necessary implication".
In other cases, the Act reversed the common law. For example, there was a common law rule that, when interpreting statutes, courts could not consider "extrinsic material" such as a Minister's second reading speech made when the statute was before parliament. The Act, by s.15AB reversed this rule, giving courts access to a wide range of material which would otherwise have been excluded.
Where there are conflicting common law rules, the Act sometimes gives preference to one approach. For example, there is sometimes seen to be a conflict between a "literal" and "purposive" reading of statutes; by s. 15AA, the Act mandates a purposive approach.
Read more about this topic: Acts Interpretation Act 1901
Famous quotes containing the words relationship with, relationship, common and/or law:
“Some [adolescent] girls are depressed because they have lost their warm, open relationship with their parents. They have loved and been loved by people whom they now must betray to fit into peer culture. Furthermore, they are discouraged by peers from expressing sadness at the loss of family relationships—even to say they are sad is to admit weakness and dependency.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man’s will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterred by such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)