CHANGING TRENDS IN RULES OF
CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION
Interpretation is the art or process of discovering and expounding the intended signification of
the language used in a statute, will, contract, or any other written document, that is, the meaning
which the author designed it to convey to others.
A statute is a will of legislature conveyed in the form of text. The original authority to make the
laws lies within the hands of the legislature. Therefore, the legislature is the highest competent
authority to make the laws. The laws are the strict rules and the guidelines made by the highest
authority for anyone and everyone with the subordinate authority. Laws will be followed and
obeyed to the best of its capacity if they are understood and interpreted in the right sense.
Interpretation or construction of a statute is an age-old process and as old as language. It is well
settled principle of law that as the statute is an edict of the Legislature, the conventional way of
interpreting or construing a statute is to seek the intention of legislature. The intention of
legislature assimilates two aspects; one aspect carries the concept of, meaning, i.e., what the
word means and another aspect conveys the concept of purpose and, objector the, reason or,
spirit pervading through the statute. The process of construction, therefore, combines both the
literal and purposive approaches. However, necessity of interpretation would arise only where
the language of a statutory provision is ambiguous, not clear or where two views are possible or
where the provision gives a different meaning defeating the object of the statute.
According to Blackstone the fairest and rational method for interpreting a statute is by exploring
the intention of the Legislature through the most natural and probable signs which are ‘either the
words, the context, the subject-matter, the effects and consequence, or the spirit and reason of the
law’.
Cooley states that ‘Interpretation’ is an art of finding out the true sense of any form of words,
i.e., the sense which their author intended to convey and of enabling others to derive from them
the same idea which the author intended to convey.
