University of London
Common Law Reasoning and Institutions

Essay Title: ‘The approach of the Law Lords to statutory interpretation has been radically changed by the Human Rights Act. Judges now see themselves as legislating human rights through their interpretation of Acts of Parliament.’ Student Number: 111244061
Candidate Number: 56307

In the English legal system, Statutory interpretation is seen as the way by which judges give meaning to the statutes by the parliament. Even though Judges have a wider choice of options in interpreting statues, the situation is now different after UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) through the European Communities Act (ECA) 1972 and after the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998. Judges are now bound to interpret the statues in such a way that is compatible with the provisions of EU law according to Sec 2(4) of ECA 1972 and also should give effect to the spirit of the conventions as required in Sec 3 of HRA 1998.
Convention jurisprudence now has an significant and straight role to play in statutory interpretation due to section 3 of HRA 1998. The Convention confers a huge number of fundamental rights, including the right to life, the right to liberty and security, and so on. The United Kingdom became a participant to the Convention many years ago but Parliament did not cope with domestic law until 1998, when the Human Rights Act was passed. So the Convention was not, prior to that Act, directly related to statutory interpretation. It could not be a source of rights or obligations and, unless a statute was ambiguous, it could not be used for the purposes of statutory interpretation. However, the Human Rights Act 1998 gives upshot in United Kingdom domestic law to the rights enclosed in the Convention. For the first time, Convention rights can be