Understanding Common Law Legislation : Drafting and Interpretation

The common law world (the Commonwealth and United States) operates through statutes applied under a uniform system, the essence of which is uniquely described in this book. Francis Bennion, the renowned Oxford don and legislative draftsman, here distills forty years of prolific writings on statute law and statutory interpretation.

There are many countries that use and apply the common law, which collectively may be called the common law world. A feature of this world is that nowadays it largely operates through statutes enacted by a country''s democratic legislature, and that these mainly fall to be construed according to a uniform system of rules, presumptions, principles and canons evolved over centuries by common law judges. The statutes subject to this interpretative regime may be called common law statutes. They are the main subject of this book, along with the said uniform system. The book distills and updates within a brief compass the author''s published writings on statute law and statutory interpretation which span a period of nearly forty years, being contained in half a dozen books and many more articles. The chief books are Statute Law (Longman, third edition 1990), Halsbury''s Laws of England, Title Statutes (Butterworths, 4th edition reissue 1995), and Bennion on Statutory Interpretation (LexisNexis Butterworths, fifth edition 2008). Since its first publication in 1984, the last named work has also been updated each year in the All England Law Reports Annual Review (Butterworths).