Hello, Greetings of the day!
Rule of Literal Interpretation:
- Words to be given the ordinary as well as natural meaning.
- If the language of law is plain, the only responsibility of the court is to give effect.
- It has been called safest rule as legislature’s intention can be deduced only from language through which it has expressed itself.
- Only verbal expression of law is taken into consideration and the courts do not go beyond what is expressed by words.
- Case law- State of Kerala v. Mathai Verghese case: Expression currency-note and bank-note have not been prefixed by word “Indian” thus intention of law makers is clear that these expressions are not limited to only Indian currency notes and Indian Bank notes.
Golden Rule:
- Also known as Rule of reasonable construction.
- It is modification of the literal rule of interpretation.
- Court should find out the intention of the legislature from the words used in the statute by giving them the ordinary or natural meaning but if this leads to absurdity, inconvenience, injustice then the court must modify the meaning to such an extent and no further as it may prevent such a consequence.
- This rule solves all problems therefore is called as Golden rule.
- In the matter of homographs, where a word can have more than one meaning, the judge can choose the preferred meaning; if the word only has one meaning, but applying this will not lead to good decision, the judge can apply a completely different meaning which would be appropriate.
- Case law- R v Allen case: In this the defendant was charged with bigamy (Section 57 of offences against the person act 1861) which states: ‘whosoever being married shall marry any other person during the lifetime of the former husband or wife is guilty of an offence’. Under The Literal Rule, bigamy would not be possible because civil courts do not recognize second marriages, so The Golden Rule was applied to determine that the word ‘marry’ should be seen as ‘to go through ceremony’ and the conviction was upheld.
- The main benefit of The Golden Rule of Interpretation is that the drafting errors in statutes would be corrected immediately.
Hope it helps
Regards,
Sneha Jaiswal
