The Human Rights Act Has Revolutionized the Way in Which Judges Interpret Statutes

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University of London Common Law Reasoning and Institutions Essay Title: “The Human Rights Act has revolutionized the way in which judges interpret statutes.” Student Number: 120379840 Candidate Number: 150536 The Human Rights Act has revolutionized the way in which judges interpret statutes .At first the definition of statutory interpretation. Statutory interpretation refers to the process by which a court looks at a statute and determines what it means. A statute, which is a bill or law passed by the legislature, imposes obligations and rules on the people. Statutes, however, although they make the law, may be open to interpretation and have ambiguities. Statutory interpretation is the process of resolving those ambiguities and deciding how a particular bill or law will apply in a particular case. Assume, for example, that a statute mandates that all vehicles must be registered with the department of motor vehicles. If the statute does not define vehicles, then it will have to be interpreted if questions arise. A person driving a motorcycle might be pulled over and the police may try to fine him if his motorcycle is not registered with the DMV. If that individual argued to the court that a motorcycle is not a "vehicle," then the court would have to interpret the statute to determine what the legislature meant by vehicle and whether the motorcycle fell within that definition and was covered by the statute. There are numerous rules of statutory interpretation. The first rule and most important rule is the rule dealing with the statute's plain language. This rule essentially states that the statute means what it says. If, for example, the statute says "vehicles," then the court is going to assume it means vehicles and not "planes" or something else. The Human Rights Act 1998 (also known as the Act or the HRA) came into force in the United Kingdom in

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