Golden rule (law)
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Within the context of law, the Golden rule, 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 is a very useful rule in the construction of a statute to adhere to the ordinary meaning of the words used, and to the grammatical construction, unless that is at variance with the intention of the legislature to be collected from the statute itself, or leads to any manifest absurdity or repugnance, in which case the language may be varied or modified so as to avoid such inconvenience but no further" - Becke v Smith (1836) 2 M&W 195 per Parke B.
[edit] Meaning
The golden rule is an adaptation of the plain meaning rule. 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.
- "… 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 farther." - Lord Wensleydale in Grey v. Pearson (1857; 6 HL CAS 61)
[edit] Use
This 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 themselves. For example, imagine you see a sign saying "Do not use lifts in case of fire." If you interpret this sign literally, you will never use the lifts just in case there is a fire.
The 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. In Sigsworth, Re, Bedford v Bedford (1935; Ch 89) the court decided that a son who had murdered his mother could not inherit her estate under s.46 of the Administration of Estates Act (1925), even though there was only one literal interpretation of the word "issue" used in s.46.
