DOCSLIB.ORG

Is the Rule of Law the Golden Rule? Accessing “Justice” for Canada’S Poor

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Is the Rule of Law the Golden Rule? Accessing “Justice” for Canada’S Poor IS THE RULE OF LAW THE GOLDEN RULE? ACCESSING “JUSTICE” FOR CANADA’S POOR Kerri A. Froc* This article argues that in order for poor people to benefit from the right to access justice under the unwritten constitutional principle of the rule of law, courts must recognize that the rule of law permits a normative evaluation of the content of laws supported and informed by express Charter rights. Traditional criticisms of the boundless nature of the rule of law under such a construct can be foreclosed by grounding the rule of law in a requirement that law promotes justice. The author undertakes an extensive critique of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in British Columbia (Attorney General) v. Christie, and maintains that despite recent setbacks, possibilities remain for the rule of law to fulfill Dugald Christie’s quest of making the law accessible to the poor. Dans cet article, l'auteure maintient d'abord que pour permettre aux personnes démunies et à faible revenu de bénéficier d'un droit d'accès à la justice qui serait garanti par le principe constitutionnel non écrit de la primauté du droit, les tribunaux doivent reconnaître que la primauté du droit permet de faire une évaluation normative du contenu des lois par une utilisation des droits expressément garantis par la Charte. L'auteure affirme aussi que les critiques traditionnelles sur la trop grande portée qu'aurait la règle de la primauté du droit, ainsi interprétée, peuvent être contrées en justifiant celle-ci par la nécessité pour le droit de promouvoir la justice. Enfin l'auteure entreprend une critique exhaustive de la décision de la Cour suprême du Canada dans l'affaire Colombie-Britannique (Procureur général) c. Christie et maintient que, malgré les revers jurisprudentiels récents, il demeure toujours possible que le principe de la primauté du droit puisse permettre de réaliser l'objectif de Dugald Christie, c'est-à-dire de rendre la justice accessible aux personnes démunies et à faible revenu. The effect of lawless acts that go unremedied is devastating on the disadvantaged.... The master key to poverty is often justice.1 * LL.M. (Candidate), University of Ottawa. I would like to thank Professors Jennie Abell and Martha Jackman of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa for their encouragement and advice in writing this article. Any mistakes are, of course, my own. 1 Dugald Christie, “The poor deserve an even break from the justice system: A former lawyer says British Columbia law firms should ensure proper legal services go to those who cannot pay the hefty fees. And courts should get their priorities right” The Vancouver Sun (29 February, 2000). My article is dedicated to the memory of Dugald 460 LA REVUE DU BARREAU CANADIEN [Vol.87 Constitutional claims to “liberty,” “security of the person” and “equality” based on sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms2 have been of limited utility to poor people seeking the courts’ recognition of violations to their civil and human rights. While there have been significant legal victories,3 there have also been shocking defeats that have underscored the apparent inability of the law to reflect how the poor experience various oppressive state actions regulating their lives.4 This is nowhere more evident than in cases concerning the right of poor people to access to justice5 in civil Christie. 2 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c.11 [Charter]. 3 And arguably, even these victories have been somewhat partial and contingent. For example, in Falkiner v. Ontario (Ministry of Community and Social Services) (2000), 49 O.R. (3d) 564, 189 D.L.R. (4th) 765 (C.A.), the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down the Ontario “spouse in the house” rules forcing single mothers on social assistance to be financially dependent on men living in their households. While the section 15 case succeeded, the Court refused to adjudicate the section 7 claim, despite evidence there were serious abuses of women’s liberty to live their lives as they chose free from state interference and surveillance. In Dunmore v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2001 SCC 94, [2001] 3 S.C.R. 1016 [Dunmore], the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional labour legislation which prevented agricultural workers – traditionally a marginalized and low-paid segment of the workforce – from organizing, on the basis that this violated the workers’ section 2(d) rights to freedom of association. The majority did not discuss the workers’ poverty, however, or otherwise contextualize the impact of their exclusion as members of the working poor. If the court had discussed the civil rights of poor people in a broader and contextualized sense, this might have had an impact on cases such as Federated Anti-Poverty Groups of B.C. v. Vancouver (City), 2002 BCSC 105, (2002), 28 M.P.L.R. (3d) 165. There, the British Columbia Supreme Court upheld a bylaw restricting areas where the poor could panhandle, finding that it did not violate their freedom of expression and accorded with fundamental justice under section 7. 4 See, for example, Masse v. Ontario (Ministry of Community and Social Services) (1996), 134 D.L.R. (4th) 20, 35 C.R.R. (2d) 44 (Ont. Div. Ct.); leave to appeal to C.A. denied (1996), 40 Admin. L.R. (2d) 87n; leave to appeal to S.C.C. denied [1996] S.C.C.A. No. 373 [Masse]; and Gosselin v. Quebec (Attorney General), 2002 SCC 85, [2002] 4 S.C.R. 429 [Gosselin]. In both cases, the courts rejected claims of Charter violations for levels of social assistance below subsistence levels, in Masse due to government cutbacks, in Gosselin because the claimant was under age 30 and did not participate in a workfare program. 5 For the purposes of this article, I am confining the meaning of this term to “reasonable and effective access to courts of law and the opportunity to obtain legal services from qualified professionals, that are related to the determination and interpretation of legal rights and obligations by courts of law or other independent tribunals,” as the British Columbia Court of Appeal has done in the case of Christie v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2005 BCCA 631, [2006] 2 W.W.R. 610 at 638 2008] Is the Rule of Law the Golden Rule? Accessing “Justice”... 461 matters6 where violations of Charter rights are alleged. The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in New Brunswick (Minister of Health and Community Services) v. G.(J.)7 was significant for its finding that the New Brunswick government had the obligation to provide funding for legal counsel in a child apprehension hearing. The finding was so narrowly circumscribed to the particular facts and circumstances of the case, however, that it has been difficult to convince the courts to recognize a right to state-funded legal services in other cases, even other child apprehension cases. Poor people seeking to rely upon G.(J.) to obtain court-ordered counsel have had to advance highly individualized analyses of their particular circumstances in order to succeed. Such cases are generally devoid of precedential value that would spark systemic change. Reported cases where the government’s systemic failures to provide funding for legal services in civil matters, or its imposition of financial barriers to access to justice, have been found to violate the Charter are scarce. Even where there has been some success, it has been at the expense of recognition by the courts of the real impact of these actions upon those without financial means to pursue their legal rights. The systemic claims of the poor have succeeded where the courts have been able to generalize poor people’s poverty out of existence and see their impediments to access to justice as those experienced by “ordinary” (read: middle class) litigants. But while this (over-) generalization has resulted in some minor successes, it proved fatal in the most significant [Christie (CA)]. McLachlin C.J.C. in the Supreme Court decision allowing the appeal, criticized this definition as only reflecting a certain type of access to justice, that is, “access aided by a lawyer” (British Columbia (Attorney General) v. Christie, 2007 SCC 21, [2007] 1 S.C.R. 873 [Christie]. I allow that the definition of “access to justice” is potentially very broad. As I discuss below, however, I am primarily interested in analyzing access to justice in relation to enforcing constitutional rights. In that respect, access to legal representation is almost always a necessary element of “access to justice”: John Carten Personal Law Corp. v. British Columbia (Attorney General), [1998] 3 W.W.R. 571, 153 D.L.R. (4th) 460 (B.C.C.A.) [Carten] at para. 85 per McEachern C.J.B.C. (dissenting but not on this issue). I discuss the Supreme Court Christie decision in greater detail below. 6 I do not intend to explore the right to publicly-funded counsel in the criminal context, given the specialized body of law that applies to such an issue (particularly R. v. Rowbotham (1988), 25 O.A.C. 321, 63 C.R. (3d) 113 (C.A.)), explicit mention of the right to counsel upon arrest or detention in section 10(b) of the Charter, and the greater funding from the federal government for legal aid in criminal cases. The individualized analysis in these cases is problematic as well, and to the extent that criminal cases act as the “benchmark” for the right to counsel, the courts may need to be persuaded to expand the analysis there for progress to be made on the civil side.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • IN the COURT of APPEAL of the STATE of CALIFORNIA SIXTH APPELLATE DISTRICT the PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, V. JOHN PAUL FL
    Filed 3/14/16 Certified for Publication 3/25/16 (order attached) IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA SIXTH APPELLATE DISTRICT THE PEOPLE, H040327 (Santa Clara County Plaintiff and Respondent, Super. Ct. No. C9890809) v. JOHN PAUL FLOREZ, Defendant and Appellant. Defendant John Paul Florez is currently serving a “Three Strikes” sentence. Following the passage of Proposition 36, the Three Strikes Reform Act, he filed a petition for resentencing under Penal Code section 1170.126.1 Although he was eligible to be resentenced based on his current and past offenses, the trial court exercised its discretion to find that resentencing him “would pose an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety” (§ 1170.126, subd. (f)) and denied his petition. Defendant appealed. For the reasons set forth below we find no merit in any of defendant’s arguments on appeal and affirm the order denying his petition. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND In 1998, police officers saw defendant urinating behind a convenience store in San Jose. Officers believed defendant dropped something on the ground. Shortly thereafter, officers discovered a small bag containing 0.19 grams of cocaine near where defendant 1 Unspecified statutory references are to the Penal Code. had been standing. Officers also determined that defendant was under the influence of opiates and cocaine. In 1999, defendant pleaded guilty to a felony for possession of a cocaine base and a misdemeanor for being under the influence. He also admitted he had been convicted of four prior strike convictions within the meaning of the former Three Strikes Law and that he had served three prior prison terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Statutory Interpretation on the Bench: a Survey of Forty-Two Judges on the Federal Courts of Appeals
    STATUTORY INTERPRETATION ON THE BENCH: A SURVEY OF FORTY-TWO JUDGES ON THE FEDERAL COURTS OF APPEALS Abbe R. Gluck & Richard A. Posner CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1300 II. OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY .............................................................................................. 1305 A. Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 1306 B. Summary of the Findings .............................................................................................. 1309 1. The Judge’s Generation ............................................................................................. 1311 2. The D.C. Circuit Is Different ................................................................................... 1312 3. Previous Experience Working in the Federal Government .................................. 1313 C. An Overarching Impression of Widespread Eclecticism ............................................ 1313 III. DO JUDGES REALLY READ THE (WHOLE) STATUTE AT THE OUTSET OF STATUTORY CASES? .................................................................................................... 1315 A. Text Versus Context ......................................................................................................... 1316 B. Dictionaries ....................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Statutory Interpretation As Practical Reasoning
    Statutory Interpretation as Practical Reasoning William N. Eskridge, Jr.* Philip P. Frickey** In the last decade, statutory interpretation has reemerged as an im- portant topic of academic theory and discussion.' This development is welcome, since few topics are more relevant to legal craft and educa- tion than the interpretation of statutes, now our primary source of law. The recent theoretical views, however, contrast with practicing lawyers' strategies of statutory interpretation. When practitioners give advice to clients about what a statute means, their approach is usually eclectic: They look at the text of the relevant statutory provisions, any legislative history that is available, the context in which the legislation was en- acted, the overall legal landscape, and the lessons of common sense and good policy. But when law professors talk about statutory interpre- tation, they tend to posit a more abstract, "grand" theory that privi- leges one or another of these approaches as "foundational."' 2 The commentators' grand theories contrast with the more ad hoc, fact- based reasoning of the practicing lawyer. How do judges interpret statutes? How should they? Many com- mentators argue that judicial interpretation is, or at least ought to be, inspired by grand theory. We think these commentators are wrong, both descriptively and normatively: Judges' approaches to statutory in- terpretation are generally eclectic, not inspired by any grand theory, * Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. ** Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School. We thank Daniel Farber, Dennis Patterson, Richard Posner, Suzanna Sherry, and Peter Strauss for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
    [Show full text]
  • Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 389 Pp
    REVIEW OF POVERTY RIGHTS, SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP, AND LEGAL ACTIVISM EDITED BY MARGOT YOUNG, SUSAN B. BOYD, GWEN BRODSKY AND SHELAGH DAY Margo Louise Foster* Margot Young, Susan B. Boyd, Gwen Brodsky & Shelagh Day, eds., Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 389 pp. Louise Arbour has likened the present state of human rights in the inter- national context to a pillar of glass: these rights are invisible, decorative, and support nothing.1 Her sharp metaphor seems equally applicable to the treat- ment of human rights - in particular, social and economic rights - on the domestic front. Many Canadians take pride in the fundamental rights and freedoms entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,2 but as the essays in Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism3 show, many fail to see how those rights are infringed by the existence of poverty. This failure to see can also be observed in Canadian courts: for example, Gosselin v. Quebec (Attorney General),4 the very case that instigated Poverty, illustrates how the courts have resisted using the Charterto protect economic and social rights or to hold governments accountable for policies that per- petuate poverty. Within Canadian society, one can easily observe a divide * B.A. Hons. (UBC), M.A. (SFU), L.L.B. (UVIC 2009). I wish to thank Professor Freya Kodar for her feedback on an earlier draft of this review and Professor Benjamin Berger for his insightful and challenging comments on subsequent drafts. 1 Louise Arbour, "International Human Rights Advocacy: Opportunities and Limitations" (Lecture delivered at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, 19 September 2008) [unpublished], cited with the speaker's permission.
    [Show full text]
  • Living Originalism and Living Constitutionalism As Moral Readings of the American Constitution
    LIVING ORIGINALISM AND LIVING CONSTITUTIONALISM AS MORAL READINGS OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION JAMES E. FLEMING∗ INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1171 I. THE BALKANIZATION (AND BALKINIZATION) OF ORIGINALISM........ 1173 II. BALKIN’S LIVING ORIGINALISM AS A MORAL READING OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION ................................................................ 1175 III. STRAUSS’S LIVING CONSTITUTIONALISM AS A MORAL READING OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION .................................................... 1177 A. Originalism and Its Sins ............................................................ 1177 B. The Common Law ...................................................................... 1179 C. The Role of the Written Constitution: Common Ground and Jefferson’s Problem ............................................................ 1180 D. Constitutional Amendments and the Living Constitution .......... 1183 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 1184 INTRODUCTION With this event – A Symposium on Jack Balkin’s Living Originalism and David Strauss’s The Living Constitution – we launch a Boston University School of Law series of symposia on significant recent books in law. The distinctive format is to pick two significant books that join issue on an important topic, to invite the author of each book to write an essay on the other book, and to invite several Boston University School of Law faculty
    [Show full text]
  • Importance of Statutory Interpretation Statutory Interpretation Is An
    Importance of statutory interpretation Statutory interpretation is an important aspect of the common law. In about half of all reported cases in Australia, the courts are required to rule on the meaning of legislation. Interpretation Acts The meaning of Commonwealth legislation is governed by the provisions in the Acts Interpretations Act (1901). It prescribes the meanings of common terms and provides courts with clear directions to resolve a range of potential inconsistencies. The Traditional (General) Rules – sometimes referred to as Literalism The traditional common-law approach to statutory interpretation was to "look at the words of the Act". This approach was founded on the assumption that the statute alone was a reliable guide to the intent of the Parliament. That is, Parliament said what it means, and means what it said (within the context of the legislation). However, to assist the courts in interpreting legislation, judges relied upon three general rules (REFER SEPARATE DOCUMENT CONCERNING A 4TH RULE – THE MORE THAN RULE). These were the: Literal Rule: The literal rule dictated that the courts gave effect to the "ordinary and natural meaning" of legislation. This Rule was defined by Higgins J, in The Amalgamated Society of Engineers v The Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd (1920). Justice Higgins said “The fundamental rule of interpretation, to which all others are subordinate, is that a statute is to be expounded according to the intent of the Parliament that made it; and that intention has to be found by an examination of the language used in the whole of the statute as a whole. The question is, what does the language mean; and when we find what the language means in it's ordinary and natural sense, it is our duty to obey that meaning, even if we think the result to be inconvenient, impolitic or improbable”.
    [Show full text]
  • The Chimerical Concept of Original Public Meaning by Richard H
    The Chimerical Concept of Original Public Meaning By Richard H. Fallon, Jr. Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3 I. Approaches to Constitutional “Meaning”: Contrasting PMO With A Historian’s Multiple- Meanings Thesis ........................................................................................................................ 10 A. Public Meaning Originalism .............................................................................................. 11 B. Foner’s Historical Scholarship and Original Meanings: The Fourteenth Amendment ..... 17 C. A Preliminary Contrast ...................................................................................................... 20 II. Trying to Make Sense of the Idea of Original Public Meaning ............................................... 21 A. Literal or Semantic Meaning ............................................................................................. 21 B. Pragmatic (or Contextual) Enrichment .............................................................................. 23 1. The Problem of Speaker Identification........................................................................... 24 2. The Problem of Characterizing Reasonable Readers or Listeners ................................ 28 C. Reconsidering the Concept of Original Public Meaning ................................................... 33 D. Linguistic Idiosyncrasy .....................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Statutory Interpretation in a Nutshell
    THE CANADIAN BAR REVIEW VOL. XVI - JANUARY, 1938 - - NO. 1 STATUTE INTERPRETATION IN A NUTSHELL PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS RULE I.-If you are trying to guess what meaning a; court will :attach to a section in a statute which has not yet been passed on by a court, you should be careful how you use. Craies' Statute Law and Maxwell on The Interpretation of Statutes. As armouries of arguments for counsel they can be very useful: but, you must know how to choose your weapon. In at least three respects these legal classics are very defective (a) Both books assume one great sun of a principle, "the plain meaning rule", around which revolve .in planetary order a series of minor rules of- construction : both assume that what courts do is unswervingly determined by that one principle . This is not so. Examine a few recent cases and you will find not a principle - nothing so definite as that - but an approach, - a certain attitude towards the words of a statute. Rook closer and -,you will see that there is not one single approach, but three,._ (i) "the literal rule", (ii) "the golden rule", - (iii) "tithe mischièlf rule". Any one of these approaches may be selected by your -.court : which it does decide to "select may, in a élose Yourcase, be t-he determining element in its decision .2 guess should therefore be based on an application of all three approaches : you should not be misled by Craies and Maxwell into thinking there is only one to consider. (b) Both books base their rules not on decisions, not on what the courts did in cases before them, but on dicta, the 1 Thus in Vacher v.
    [Show full text]
  • Antonin Scalia's Textualism in Philosophy, Theology, and Judicial
    Antonin Scalia’s Textualism in philosophy, theology, and judicial interpretation of the Constitution* Herman Philipse** 1. Introduction In his forceful and beautifully written essay ‘A Matter of Interpretation’, Justice Antonin Scalia proposed two interrelated theses, a minor and a major one.1 The minor thesis is a causal or historical conjecture and it says that the great liberty taken by judges of the Supreme Court in interpreting statutes and the Constitution is largely due to the influence of the common-law tradition upon legal training in American law schools.2 According to the major thesis, which is normative, this liberty of interpretation is undesirable, because it infringes upon the separation of powers in a modern democracy. If, under the pretext of interpreting laws, judges of the Supreme Court in fact revise the Constitution and promulgate new laws, they are usurping the legislative power that is exclusively assigned to the legislature. For this reason, the Supreme Court, and indeed all courts, should adopt a method of interpretation called ‘Textualism’ or ‘Originalism’, according to which the aim of judicial interpretation is to establish the original meaning of a statutory text.3 As Justice Scalia urges, the question of whether ‘life-tenured judges are free to revise statutes and constitutions adopted by the people and their representatives’ is ‘a question utterly central to the existence of democratic government’ (p. 133). However, both in the United States and in Europe the vast majority of judges reject Justice’s Scalia’s methodology of Textualism, so that the issue of Textualism is a central controversy in the philosophy of law.
    [Show full text]
  • But That Is Absurd!: Why Specific Absurdity Undermines Textualism Linda D
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Brooklyn Law School: BrooklynWorks Brooklyn Law Review Volume 76 Issue 3 SYMPOSIUM: Article 2 Statutory Interpretation: How Much Work Does Language Do? 2011 But That Is Absurd!: Why Specific Absurdity Undermines Textualism Linda D. Jellum Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr Recommended Citation Linda D. Jellum, But That Is Absurd!: Why Specific bA surdity Undermines Textualism, 76 Brook. L. Rev. (2011). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol76/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Brooklyn Law Review by an authorized editor of BrooklynWorks. But That Is Absurd! WHY SPECIFIC ABSURDITY UNDERMINES TEXTUALISM* Linda D. Jellum† INTRODUCTION With 2010 being the twenty-fifth year since Justice Scalia joined the Supreme Court and revived textualism,1 I could not resist exploring and critiquing the absurdity doctrine,2 a doctrine used by Justice Scalia and other * © 2011 Linda D. Jellum. All rights reserved. † Associate Professor of Law, Mercer University School of Law. I would like to thank Lawrence Solan, Rebecca Kysar, and the Brooklyn Law Review for inviting me to contribute to this symposium. I would also like to thank Shelia Scheuerman, Charleston Law School, and the participants in Southeastern Law Scholars Conference for offering me an opportunity to present this article while it was still a work in progress. Finally, David Ritchie and Suzianne Painter-Thorne provided valuable suggestions.
    [Show full text]
  • Retail Sales Taxation in Canada
    RETAIL SALES TAXATION IN CANADA 1 RETAIL SALES TAXATION IN CANADA Contents • Overview of RST in Canada • 2008 Provincial Budget Developments • Common RST Compliance and Audit Issues • Recent Case Law 2 TAX RATES IN CANADA YT NT N/A NU HST 13% N/A N/A BC AB 7% SK MB QC N/A 5% 7% ON 7.5% PE 8% 10% GST 5% Provincial GST in Combined Province Rate Base GST/PST Rate British Columbia (BC) 7% No 12% Alberta (AB) N/A No 5% Saskatchewan (SK) 5% No 10% Manitoba (MB) 7% No 12% Ontario (ON) 8% No 13% Quebec (QC) 7.5% * Yes 12.875% New Brunswick (NB) N/A No 13% Nova Scotia (NS) N/A No 13% Prince Edward Island (PE) 10% * Yes 15.5% Newfoundland (NF) N/A No 13% Yukon (YT), NWT (NT), Nunavut (NU) N/A No 5% * Tax calculated on a GST-included basis 3 OVERVIEW OF RST IN CANADA Reference Materials • RBA Sales Tax ReviewTM, March 2005, “Self-Assessing Tax on Imports” • RBA Sales Tax Review™, March 2004, “The Hard Rules on Software” • Ontario Retail Sales Tax Guide Number 651, “Internet Related Services” • GST & Commodity Tax, Vol. VXIII, No. 5, June – July 2004, “Taxation of Services” • Ontario Retail Sales Tax Guide Number 519, “Insurance - General Information” • Common Audit Exposures, Chapter 36, “Bundled Goods and Services” • RBA Sales Tax ReviewTM , September 2002, “Provincial Sales Tax – When Must I Register?” • Ontario Tax Reporter, Number 470, July 2001, “The Retail Sales Tax Treatment of Real Property” • British Columbia Consumer Taxation Branch Bulletin SST 072, “Real Property Contractors” • Common Audit Exposures, Chapter 28, “Purchase Exemption Certificates”
    [Show full text]
  • Literally Interpreting the Law- a Appraisal of the Literal Rule Of
    LITERALLY INTERPRETING THE LAW- A APPRAISAL OF THE LITERAL RULE OF INTERPRETATION IN INDIA 1 Alekhya Reddy. T Literal rule of interpretation is one of the oldest methods of interpretation adopted by the judiciary. This article focuses on the rules to be kept in mind while using it. Further the position of this rule in the present times has been discussed. INTRODUCTION A "Statute" is the will of the Sovereign Legislature according to which the Governments function. The executive must act and the Judiciary in the course of Administration of Justice must apply the law as laid down by the said legislative will. Very often occasions will arise where the courts will be called upon to interpret the words, phrases and expressions used in the statute. In the course of such Interpretation, the Courts have, over the centuries, laid down certain guidelines which have come to be known as "Rules of Interpretation of Statutes" .More often than not the Statutes contain "Statement of Objects and Reasons" and also a "Preamble" both of which provide guidelines for Interpreting the true meaning of the words and expressions used in the Statute. Judges have to interpret statutes and apply them. The judges frequently use this phrase true meaning or literal or plain meaning. Literal Interpretation of a statute is finding out the true sense by making the statute its own expositor. If the true sense can thus be discovered. There is no resort to construction. It is beyond question, the duty of courts, in construing statutes, to give effect to the intent of law making power, and seek for that intent in every legitimate way, but first of all the words and language employed.
    [Show full text]