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The Interpretation of Statutes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Maurice Sheldon Amos
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Extract

Section 21 of the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1857, provides that a wife deserted by her husband may apply to a metropolitan police magistrate for an order for the protection of her earnings; and the statute further provides that it shall be lawful for the husband and for his creditors to apply to the magistrate who made the order for the discharge thereof. A Mrs. Sharpe obtained such an order, and in 1864 her husband wished to apply for its discharge. He discovered that the magistrate who had made the order was dead; and the question what was now his proper course of action came before a bench composed of Cockburn C.J., Blackburn and Shee JJ., who decided unanimously that this was a casus omissus, and that it was not competent for the husband to apply to some other metropolitan magistrate who might present the advantage of being alive. Forthwith, and in the same year, there was passed the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1864, which consists of one section only, and which provides that ‘if the said magistrate shall have died or been removed or have become incapable of acting, then in every such case the husband... may apply to the magistrate for the time being acting as the successor or in the place of the magistrate who made the order.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Law Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 1934, pp. 163 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 1934

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References

2 Planiol, Traité Élémentaire de Droit Civil (lle ed.), II, § 1234.

3 (1785) 1 T. R. 44.

4 (1844) 6 Q. B. 501.

5 (1880) 49 L. J. Bk. 62.

6 (1886) 17 Q. B. D. 177.

7 Approved in Earle v. Kingscote [1900] 2 Ch. 585, and more recently in Edwards v. Porter [1925] A. C. 1, dissentientibus Lord Birkenhead and Viscount Cave.

8 [1922] 2 A. C. 339.

9 A remarkable recent instance of the verbal interpretation of a statute, resulting in a patent deviation from the intention of Parliament, is to be found in Ellerman Lines v. Murray [1931] A. C. 126.

10 2 Will. 4, c. 49.

11 Hatkins v. Lewis [1931] 2 K. B. 1, at p. 9.

12 Dr. Gutteridge, in his very interesting paper on ‘Comparative Interpretation’ in 8 Tulane Law Review, 1 (December, 1933), quotes Dr. Williams, speaking of the bilingual drafting of the Swiss Civil Code, to the effect that’ the very fact that a French translation of the Civil Code had to be made led to the altering of the German phraseology to meet the French expressions, so that greater clearness in the German version was the inevitable result.’

13 See Professor H. A. Smith's effective plea for the greater latitude of the Continental practice in ‘Interpretation in English and Continental Law,’ 9 Jour. Comp. Leg. 153 (3rd series, 1927).

14 (1917) 246 U. S. 343.

15 Lord Macnaghten, discussing the construction to be placed upon the Trades Unions Acts of 1871 and 1876 in his speech in the Taff Vale Case, made an effective reference to the minority report of the Royal Commission on Trades Unions ‘whose views found acceptance with the Legislature.’ Taff Vale Ry. v. Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants [1901] A. C. 426, at p. 438.

16 (1886) 11 App. Cas. 637.

17 [1905] 2 K. B. 748.