Golden Rule (law)
In law, the Golden rule, or British rule, is a form of statutory construction traditionally applied by English courts. The other two are the “plain meaning rule” (also known as the “literal rule”) and the “mischief rule.”
The golden rule allows a judge to depart from a word's normal meaning in order to avoid an absurd result.
The term "golden rule" seems to have originated in an 1854 court ruling, and implies a degree of enthusiasm for this particular rule of construction over alternative rules that has not been shared by all subsequent judges. For example, one judge made a point of including this note in a 1940 decision: "The golden rule is that the words of a statute must prima facie be given their ordinary meaning."
Read more about Golden Rule (law): Circumstances of Use, History and Evolution, Worked Examples
Famous quotes containing the words golden and/or rule:
“Go, throng each other’s drawing-rooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your penny-trumpets squeak:
Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a noble time,
And oil each other’s little heads
With mutual Flattery’s golden slime.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)