[9.1] As well as a body of legal doctrine, statutory interpretation is an area of skill and technique. To a degree these techniques can be described and modelled. With reference to actual cases, this chapter models techniques for undertaking legal analysis of an Act, identifying interpretative clues or indications of meaning (‘interpretative factors’), formulating alternative constructions (rival contentions as to the meaning of the words in question), evaluating interpretative arguments, determining the preferable construction, and presenting a legal opinion and reasons for judgment.

Chapter 2 accounts for the selection of case law which forms the basis of the legal analyses of Article 13. The chapter, further, accounts for three building blocks of importance for the analyses. First, how the Court has provided little abstract and principled reasoning concerning the content of Article 13. Second, how the Court's method of interpretation, as such, provides few answers as to how Article 13 could and should be construed and applied. Third, how the wider precedential effect of the Court's judgments may influence how the Court construes and applies Article 13 in individual cases. These building blocks explain, at least partly, why there there has been, and still is, considerable uncertainty concerning the content of the case law and why the Court's law-making potential concerning Article 13 still is large. The chapter, also, briefly explains how legal literature has been used to clarify the content of Article 13 and why a larger comparative analysis has not been performed.