I’m working on a brief right now, about interpreting two sections of one statute, in light of regulations passed under the authority of another statute, and their interactions with a federal statute. Various other statutes make cameo appearences, under the pari materia principle.
That’s gooood eatin’.
I woke up at 4 am with a thought about how to finesse a particular issue. Couldn’t resist getting up and doing some more on-line browsing.
Brief’s about half-way done. And then, once I get it filed, I get to go off to court and argue about the relationship between the three defined terms: “highway”; “public highway”; and “provincial highway.”
Just doesn’t get any better. And they pay me to do this!
Wouldn’t have anythng to to do with a local version of Ontario’s Safe Streets Act, would it? I well remember having to go through that one, including looking for the definition of “roadway” in Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act, some months ago.
Yeah, I’ll admit to a certain fascination of statutory interpretation, as well.
and, based on the free-fall this thread went into, it’s apparent that others don’t share our fascination, Spoons. at least eleanorigby expressed her admiration for the hordes of stat interp lawyers, toiling away with database and dictionary…
Well, I’ll let you lawyerly types get on with the [del]hairsplitting[/del] statutory interpretation. Doing drawings for computer manuals is so much more fun.
You open the CAD model, rearrange the parts and change the view to suit your desired drawing, export the vector image, pull it into Illustrator, massage the line weights and colours to make them conform to the line weights and spot colours needed in your final document (trust me–it’s much easier to do it now), then place the drawing into your composition and surround it with text. Then you print the document to a PDF file using the appropriate print preset, open it in Acrobat, and go over it using Output Preview and Preflight to check the colours and fonts. You turn off all the desired spot colours; if there’s anything remaining, you know you haven’t made all the colours conform, and you have to go back to the original document and fix it. You also make sure all fonts are either embedded or converted to outlines (that is, converted to little drawings within the larger document). This ensures that no text will change in appearance when the printer prints it.
When everything’s done, you get it content-approved and ship it off to the printers for a proof.
Ah crap, I thought the “stat” stood for statistics instead of statutory. I was looking forward to a brisk discussion about numerical comparisons and their applications.
One of my favorite spreadsheets tracks pieces against manhours then compairs that line to production rates and overall volume. Idealy the PPMH chart should flatline or slowly rise, when it tracks volume it means someone is sandbagging. The production rate line should track the PPMH line, when it tracks the volume line it means we are having an abnormal amount of downtime issues (maintenance related). When all lines finally track together I get to start working on forcasting models and do it again next period.
Seriously, I think that my interest in statutory interpretation comes from my days as a technical writer. There, it was necessary to be careful, to know exactly what you were saying, and how you were saying it; mainly because of the desire to have the content correct, but also because of possible liability issues that could arise from a user’s misunderstanding of the instructions. Consistency in terminology helped, but even the smallest words were a concern: “the widget and the gizmo” has a different meaning from “the widget or the gizmo.”
So I find also in statutory interpretation. Yes, statutes tend to be written in legalese, and each word must be understood in some meaning–IIRC, there is a debate in various parts of the legal community over whether the intent of the statute drafter must be considered, regardless of what the statute plainly says; or whether Scalia’s “Four Corners” method of interpretation is the one to use. Regardless of the bigger picture, though, the little words are there and are vitally important in interpretation:
[ul][]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit;[]Suspendisse in augue;[]Integer tincidunt nibh elementum ligula;[]Sed justo augue, consectetuer a, placerat ac, gravida a, ipsum; and,[*]Aenean quam lacus, adipiscing id, pretium vitae, luctus quis, urna.[/ul]Emphasis mine, for ease of viewing. It’s the bigger picture working with the little words, that I rather like–and it is very much like technical writing.
The last time I had to do anything from Legal, I was handed a block of text and instructed, “Don’t change anything.” I clarified that to, “You can change the font and text size, but for the sake of Og don’t add a comma…”
[quote=Spoons]
…the little words are there and are vitally important in interpretation:
[ul][li]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit;[]Suspendisse in augue;[]Integer tincidunt nibh elementum ligula;[]Sed justo augue, consectetuer a, placerat ac, gravida a, ipsum; and,[]Aenean quam lacus, adipiscing id, pretium vitae, luctus quis, urna.[/ul]Emphasis mine, for ease of viewing.[/li][/quote]
I didn’t know you spoke Esperanto. Is this a legal thing?
Because of the Dope, I’ve been exposed to a small amount of printed law statutes, and it very much reminds me of programming: explicitly specifying what may and may not occur, what must occur, and what must not occur, and how to handle the exceptions. The entire police and court system is essentially a human error handler.
“Human error handler”? Sunspace, you definitely put the “technical” in “technical writer.”
Actually, there are many more statutes than just those dealing with police and courts; and many of them are nowhere near as interesting and exciting. For example, I’m convinced that a repressive government somewhere in the world is using the Alberta Land Titles Act to extract confessions from political prisoners.
That’s just from being too close to the Software Department.
But ultimately the police and courts are the enforcement arm of society, are they not? Even for civil affairs, ultimately, if someone doesn’t fulfil their end, someone else uses the courts to sue, and if that doesn’t bring the desired results, the police are there to force an end.
Not necessarily. For example, an error on a land title won’t necessarily result in a visit by police (although in the case of an intentionally fraudulent error on title, criminal charges under the Criminal Code may well be pursued by the Crown). Nor will somebody refusing to make good on their obligation after losing a lawsuit in contract or tort–there are a variety of methods available to enforce a judgment, not all of which involve police. It’s true that such things as a court order involving, say, reposession, might be delivered or accompanied by police, just to keep things civil between the parties; but again, they need not be, depending on circumstances. There are many ways to “force an end” to a matter, some of which are much more evil than using police.
