[6] Purposive interpretation is used when the courts use extraneous materials from the pre-enactment phase of legislation, including early drafts, hansards, committee reports, and white papers.
Israeli jurist Aharon Barak views purposive interpretation as a legal construction that combines subjective and objective elements.
The plain meaning rule gained popularity during the 18th and 19th centuries as the courts took an increasingly strict view of the words within statutes.
[citation needed] One of the leading statements of the plain meaning rule was made by Chief Justice Nicholas Conyngham Tindal in the Sussex Peerage case (1844),[9] concerning whether Augustus d'Este succeeded to the titles of his father Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, and in particular, whether the marriage of his father and mother was valid under the Royal Marriages Act 1772: ... the only rule for the construction of Acts of Parliament is, that they should be construed according to the intent of the Parliament which passed the Act.
The words themselves alone do, in such case, best declare the intention of the lawgiver.A strict application of the plain meaning rule can sometimes result in "absurd" outcomes.
[11] This was propounded in Grey v Pearson[10](1857) where Lord Wensleydale stated In construing ... statutes ... the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words is to be adhered to, unless that would lead to some absurdity, or some repugnance 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 the absurdity and inconsistency, but no farther.
[12]The degree of absurdity or ambiguity necessary to exercise the golden rule is determined on a case-by-case basis by the individual judge in question.
In Maddox, the defendant travelled at over the 30 mph speed limit in a minibus with eleven seats (excluding that of the driver), most of which were unoccupied.
Under the Official Secrets Act 1920, it was an offence to obstruct an armed forces member "in the vicinity" of a prohibited place.
Historically, Australian legalism (a variant of originalism) persevered for many years following the landmark decision in the Engineers Case.
Sometimes considered aggressively textualist, Australian legalism emphasizes the importance of and attends only to the words in the statute when determining meaning.
[16] The Court remains entrenched in the tradition of textualism and original meaning more than the typical European, Canadian, or even American jurist; however, Justice McHugh refers to Australian legalism as "faint-hearted", as the Court's focus on textualism does not preclude its ability to evaluate extrinsic evidence.
[16] Along with the other radical innovations of the Mason Court, the use of extraneous materials has resulted in considerable tension between textualist history and the purposive future.
While there has been some retrogressive action since the Mason Court, Australian constitutional interpretation is now arguably pluralistic, similar to that of the United States.
[16] In Canada, the purposive approach was developed and expanded by Elmer Driedger in his 1974 book, The Construction of Statutes.
The Supreme Court ruling in Free World Trust v. Électro Santé Inc. [2000][4] set out "the test for patent infringement" and "the principles of purposive claim construction".
In R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985], Justice Dickson, speaking for the majority of the court, wrote, at paragraph 116: [T]he proper approach to the definition of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Charter was a purposive one.
The interpretation should be ... a generous rather than a legalistic one, aimed at fulfilling the purpose of the guarantee and securing for individuals the full benefit of the Charter's protection.
At the same time it is important not to overshoot the actual purpose of the right or freedom in question, but to recall that the Charter was not enacted in a vacuum, and must therefore ... be placed in its proper linguistic, philosophic and historical contexts.A 1969 report of the English Law Commission proposed that the English courts should adopt a purposive approach.
The House of Lords held that courts could now take a purposive approach to interpret legislation when the traditional methods of statutory construction are in doubt or would result in an absurdity.
If the language proves to be ambiguous I can see no sound reason not to consult Hansard to see if there is a clear statement of the meaning that the words were intended to carry.
Why then cut ourselves off from the one source in which may be found an authoritative statement of the intention with which the legislation is placed before Parliament?Israel's legal community is largely purposivist and has rejected such methods of interpretation as narrow textualism and static historicism.
[24][25] Barak has encouraged Israel's judiciary to refer to the Canadian Supreme Court's purposive approach to Charter rights and its rights-forwarding orientation.
[24] Barak has written in support of purposive interpretation and applied it while serving as a Justice to the Supreme Court of Israel.
[28] Purposivism in the United States is used to interpret a statute with broadly worded text and a seemingly clear purpose.