LEGAL LANGUAGE

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3271, 25 February 1937, Page 7

LEGAL LANGUAGE

PUZZLES FOR THE PUBLIC VAST AMOUNT OF VERBIAGE. During marfy years many New Zealanders, trying to pick the meaning of statutes as a whole or sections of them, must have agreed with the remark of Dickens’ Mr Bumble: “The law’s a hass.” Of course, people in other -countries suffer similar bewilderment in the mazes of statutory phrases. For example “The Accountant” (London), had occasion recently to comment on exasperating verbiage of statutes.

“The accountant wrestling with the intricacies of the new Finance Act, as well as all its predecessors,” the writer remarked, “has a good reason as anyone to bewail the linguistic defects of the Statute Book, and we note with interest that Mr A, G, Davis read a paper on the subject at a recent provincial meeting of the Law Society. That the draftsman has his difficulties, and very formidable ones too, no one would deny, for there is no ‘inevitable word’ which will give a final and lasting meaning to the interpretation of a legal phrase, and, moreover, the draftsman’s first efforts are liable to be so drastically altered during the progress, of the Bill through its various stages, that it is sympathy rather than censure that he needs. Mistakes in drafting or an ill-con-sidered word or phrase, the fuller implications of which have not been realised, may,' however, cost both the State and the citizen dear, and Mr Davis stresses the importance of a fresh mind being brought to bear upon a Bill after the draftsman lias done his work.

• “Among the remedies which he suggests are, first, that in an action necessitated solely by the imperfections of the drafting of a statute, the costs of both parties should be payable by the State, the public being safeguarded by the necessity of obtaining a certificate from the trial judge that the action was one which mainly concerned the interpretation of a doubtful point in the statute and was a proper one in other respects; secondly, that steps should be taken to ensure that no ill-considered amendments are ever embodied in a Bill; thirdly, that the staff of Parliamentary counsel should be increased; and lastly, that standing committees should be appointed to report on every Bill as soon as,., it is printed, and discover whether, as drawn, it represents the intentions of its framer. An eminent Secretary of the Privy Council in the reign of Queen Victoria, described an Act of Parliament as ‘embodying the doubts and subtleties of generations of men,’ and looking at the almost unceasing stream of legislation that flows from the Mother of Parliaments, the wouldbe law-abiding citizen must wish that the subtleties were less obscure and the doubts less frequent.”