Viscount Simonds said: ‘For words, and particularly general words, cannot be read in isolation: their colour and content are derived from their context. So it is that I conceive it to be my right and duty to examine every word of a statute in its context, and I use ‘context’ in its widest sense, which I have already indicated as including not only other enacting provisions of the same statute, but its preamble, the existing state of the law, other statutes in pari materia, and the mischief which I can, by those and other legitimate means, discern the statute was intended to remedy.’ However the guiding principles of interpretation and exposition of statutes are stated in so many ways that ‘support of high authority may be found for general and apparently irreconcilable propositions’.
Judges:
Viscount Simonds
Citations:
[1957] AC 436
Cited by:
Cited – Majorstake Ltd v Curtis HL 6-Feb-2008
The tenant had served a notice under the 2003 Act to acquire a new lease. The landlord in replying that he wished to redevelop the site, sought himself to define the extent of the ‘estate’ to include only the tenant’s apartment and a neighbouring . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Litigation Practice
Updated: 01 May 2022; Ref: scu.266088
