SENTENTIAL LEGIS; AND ITS IMPACT ON INTERPRETATION OFSTATUTORY LAW

A statute is the creature of the sovereign legislature; a primary law making body in India. It is a
purposeful design of the legislature with a definite intention to achieve a definite object. The intention
or the object of the legislature is expressed through the language of the statute and in many cases
the statutory language is sufficiently determinative to resolve a given case. However experience of all
those who have to bear and share the task of application of the law has been different; there are gaps
to be filled, ambiguities to be resolved, doubts to be cleared; with a purpose to discover the legal
meaning of a word or a term expressed in the statute.
Words are not scientific symbols with a definite and precise meaning. One word may have
different meanings, necessitating interpretation to find out the true sense in which the legislature
employed the word in the statute. Legislation is drawn by the drafts-man and a drafts-men’s capacity
to anticipate the future is limited. He may not foresee some future possibility or overlook a possible
misinterpretation of the original intentions of the legislation. And many a times a law which is enacted
with one particular situation in mind may be called in operation in quite a different situations.
Thus there may be many occasions on which the judiciary may be called upon to interpret the
words, phrases and expressions used in a statute. In the course of such interpretation the courts have
laid down certain guidelines known as “Rules of Interpretation of a Statute”
In India there is no Statute law for Statutory Interpretation for an act of the Parliament. The
rules of interpretation evolved by the courts in process adjudication form an important aid for drawing
the intention /purpose of the legislator in enacting the law. Some of the rules interpretation which
have assumed legitimacy due to continuous application by the courts are; Sententia Legis, Statute to
be read as a whole, language of the statute to be read as it is, plain meaning rule, mischief rule and
literal rule of interpretation.