AN EXAMINATION OF THE ATTITUDE OF THE NIGERIAN COURTS TO THE USE OF INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC AIDS IN THE INTERPRETATION OF STATUTES
- Project Research
- 1-5 Chapters
- Qualitative
- Library / Doctrinal
- Abstract : Available
- Table of Content: Available
- Reference Style: APA
- Recommended for : Student Researchers
- NGN 3000
Background to the Study
The doctrine of separation of power entails the divisions of power among the different organs of government namely, the legislature, executive and judiciary. The legislature is the body responsible for making laws, the Executive executes and implements while the judiciary interprets the laws. In the course of interpreting laws made by the legislature, the courts use various aids to interpretation in other to arrive at the intention of the legislature as contained in the statute. Some of these aids are intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic aids are those contained inside the statutes while extrinsic are those contained outside the statutes. Other aids to interpretation of statutes include Literal rule, golden rule and mischief rule. There are two views to statutory interpretation namely, the texualist and purposivist. The textualist are of the opinion that in interpretation of statutes, the only thing relevant is the TEXT or LANGUAGE of the statutes and nothing more. While the purposivist are of the view that the court should always seek out the purpose surrounding the legislation especially where a literal meaning of the text will lead to absurdity. This work will examine the various aids to statutory interpretation in Nigeria.
Generally, in drafting legislation, the Nigerian legislature has two major goals to wit; to construct a legislation that gives legal effect to government policies; to communicate the law clearly to the people who are affected by it, the officials who administer it and the Judges who interpret it.
The Nigerian legislature draft law based on the instructions they receive from the sponsoring Ministry, as a general tradition, this is the case in terms of Executive Bills that are submitted by the President or Governor. The meaning of that law, in the end is not necessarily the meaning the sponsoring Ministry or Legislature’s intention nor the meaning the average reader might give it. Rather the meaning of the law is what the courts determine it to be by applying the substantial body of legal rules known as the principles of statutory interpretation. To put this in a constitutional context, the role of our courts as a final authority on the meaning of legislation is one of the most important component of the rule of law. Because the courts, independent of the Executive government determine the meaning of the law, that meaning does not change simply because a different executive government is in power. That keeps the law sufficiently certain to enable the people who are subject to it to know their rights and obligation. However, challenges abound as far as drafting and interpretation of statutes is concerned. Some of these problems include but not limited to the fact that different words could mean different things depending on the time period; every word has meaning.
It is against this backdrop that this research has been embarked upon in order to address the attitude of the Nigerian courts towards the application of the intrinsic and extrinsic aids to interpretation of statutes.
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