History and Evolution
The rule is usually based on part of Becke v Smith (1836) 2 M&W 195 per Justice Parke (later Lord Wensleydale), which states:
It is a very useful rule in the construction of a statute to adhere to the ordinary meaning of the words used, and to the grammatical construction, unless that is at variance with the intention of the legislature to be collected from the statute itself, or leads to any manifest absurdity or repugnance, in which case the language may be varied or modified so as to avoid such inconvenience but no further.
Twenty years later, Lord Wensleydale restated the rule in different words in Grey v. Pearson (1857) 6 HL Cas 61, 106; 10ER 1216, 1234. He wrote:
n construing (sic) statutes, and all written instruments, the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words is to be adhered to, unless that would lead to some absurdity or inconsistency with the rest of the instrument, in which case the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words may be modified, so as to avoid that absurdity or inconsistency, but not farther.
With time, the rule continues to become more refined and therefore to be a more precise and effective tool for the courts. More than a century after Grey v. Pearson, a court added this caveat: "Nowadays we should add to 'natural and ordinary meaning' the words 'in their context and according to the appropriate linguistic register' ".
Read more about this topic: Golden Rule (law)
Famous quotes containing the words history and, history and/or evolution:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)