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CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION V. STATUTORY INTERPRETATION:

Understanding the Attractions of ‘Original Intent’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2001

James Allan
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand

Abstract

I. ONCE, SAID AN AUTHOR, WHERE I NEED NOT SAY . . .

Two judges, named Stat J. and Constit J., were asked to appear on a panel at a law conference for jurists from around the world. The two judges were from different jurisdictions, though both their jurisdictions had a common-law legal tradition. Constit’s country, like most, had an American-style written constitution, which, among other things, entrenched and made justiciable a catalogue of individual rights. This document was known as the Charter and Bill of Human Rights (CBHR). Stat’s country, by contrast, was one of the few that had yet to accept the prevailing view of the benefits of American-style constitutionalism. Stat’s country had no entrenched and justiciable CBHR-type document against which judges could weigh, and if necessary strike down, the legislature’s statutes.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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