-Number of reasons/factors which prompts the discussion/elaboration to discussion of statutory interpretation.-There is a certain ambiguity about language.-Sometimes person drafting not clear what scope wants to cover. There is a certain lack of clarity of intention, and it gives rise to problems.-At times, certain things happen that was not envisaged at the time that the legislation was passed.

A.W.B. Simpson –Invitation to Law “Legislation and its Interpretation”

-There are 2 broad sources of the rules and principles;

1.) Legislation: For instance, if you take the constitution, you find in Article 295 a long list of definitions.

Each time you have to elaborate, each time you use the word, you create a dictionary.-Constitution providing its own dictionary for the words it uses.-We have Interpretation Act 2009.-Interpretation Act provides a dictionary for legislation only. We have one broad dictionary in Interpretation Act. We have judges who have elaborated their own principles for understanding what the Legislature has done.

-Outdated Interpretation Act 1960 is numbered CA 4. CA stands for Constituent Assembly.

-From 6th March, 1957 to30th June, 1960 (You need both the number of the Act and the year of the Act. Example 1/1957-From 1st July 1960 to 23rd February 1966, Acts were numbered sequentially regardless of year passed. You can find Act without knowing the year. If you know that it is Act 2, that is enough.

-From 24th February 1966 to 21st August 1969, you have NLC rules. These are also numbered sequentially. You do not need to know the year.-Look at ‘Index of Statutes in Force in Ghana.’

-Apart from early part where number depended on year, for subsequent periods, do not depend on year.-When return to civilian year, number continues just from previous civilian rule.-From NLC to AFRC, they called laws they passed Decrees. PNDC stated that what they passed should be called Laws, with capital L.-Ordinance, Act, Decree, Law – main pieces of legislation.-‘Index of Statutes’ in force in Ghana attempts to help minimize error of lawyer but letting know pieces of legislation that has been repealed and that which has not been repealed.-Index of Statutes is revised periodically.-Get a copy of the Interpretation Act.-Interpretation Act contains a number of things. It serves the scope of its application. It applies to the interpretation of the constitution as well as to every Act made by Parliament or any other body, and also applies to subordinate legislation.-Interpretation Act is trying to offer a meaning of words. The maker of constitution aware at time of framing constitution of meanings in the Interpretation Act.-If there is a conflict, the one used in constitution should prevail but to say Interpretation Act should not be used to interpret not right.-

To understand an act of parliament one may need to know the principles of Statutory interpretation which is the process of interpreting and applying legislation.Some amount of interpretation is inevitable when a case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and straightforward meaning. Sometimes however there is some ambiguity in the words of the statute that must be resolved by the judge. Legislation may contain uncertainties for a variety of reasons: Words change in meaning over time. New technologies and cultures make application of existing laws difficult for which reason stautte may need to be interpreted to fit modern thinking. To find the meanings of statutes, judges use various tools and methods of statutory interpretation, including traditional canons of statutory interpretation, legislative history, and purpose

These also known as rules of construction the Literal rule, the Mischief rule, the Purposive approach

The Golden rule of statutory interpretation, also known as the British rule, is a form of statutory interpretation that says the words of a statute should be understood in their ordinary sense. It provides that wordings should be given their ordinary meaning as far as possible, but only to the extent that they do not produce an absurd or totally obnoxious result. In other words 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 fartherThis rule may be used in two ways. It is applied most frequently in a narrow sense where there is some ambiguity or absurdity in the words themselvesThe second use of the golden rule is in a wider sense, to avoid a result that is obnoxious to principles of public policy, even where words have only one meaning.

The Plain meaning rule, also known as the literal rule, is a type of statutory construction which dictates that statutes are to be interpreted using the ordinary meaning of the language of the statute. It looks at the text as it stands. According to the plain meaning rule, words must be given their plain, ordinary and literal meaning. If the words are clear, they must be applied, even though the intention of the legislator may have been different or the result is harsh or undesirable.The literal rule is what the law says instead of what the law means. According to Professor Larry Solum in Legal Theory Lexicon: “some laws are meant for all citizens (e.g., criminal statutes) and some are meant only for specialists (e.g., some sections of the tax code). A text that means one thing in a legal context might mean something else if it were in a technical manual or a novel. So the plain meaning of a legal text is something like the meaning that would be understood by competent speakers of the natural language in which the text was written who are within the intended readership of the text and who understand that the text is a legal text of a certain type” This is the oldest of the rules of construction, it is claimed for this method that it prevents courts from taking sides in legislative or political issues. It is also said that ordinary people and lawyers do not have extensive access to and is still used today, primarily because this also avoids the danger of judges usurping the function of the legislature through judicial interpretation some of which under case law and the concept of judicial precedent amount to law making. On the other hand it is it is claimed that the rule rests on the erroneous assumption that words have a fixed meaning. In fact, words are imprecise, leading justices to impose their own prejudices to determine the meaning of a statute. However, since little else is offered as an alternative discretion-confining theory, plain meaning survives.

The mischief rule is a rule of statutory interpretation that attempts to determine the legislator's intention. It Originated from the 16th century its main aim is to determine the "mischief and defect" that the statute in question has set out to remedy, and what ruling would effectively implement this remedy.The Mischief Rule is a certain rule that judges can apply in statutory interpretation in order to discover Parliament's intention. It asks the question: By creating an Act of Parliament what was the "mischief" that the previous law did not cover?The application of this rule gives the judge more discretion than the literal and the golden rule as it allows him to effectively decide on Parliament's intent. It can be argued that this undermines Parliament's supremacy and is undemocratic. This rule of construction is of narrower application than the golden rule or the plain meaning rule, in that it can only be used to interpret a statute and, strictly speaking, only when the statute was passed to remedy a defect in the common law. Legislative intent is determined by examining secondary sources, such as committee reports, treatises, law review articles and corresponding statutes. This rule has often been used to resolve ambiguities in cases in which the literal rule cannot be applied.

The Purposive theory is a theory of statutory interpretation that holds that statutes should be interpreted in the light of the purpose behind the legislation. The purposive approach is a prominent feature of the reasoning of the European Court of Justice. It is also the dominant theory of statutory interpretation in the United States.

From the above therefore it may not be entirely correct to say that all that one may need to understand a statute is a good command of the English language. There are clear techniques for interpreting statutes and lawyers by their training are trained just for that.

Two principal concerns

Constitutional Interpretation

Statutory Interpretation