What is the actual practical impact of including the text “this act shall be liberally construed” in a bill/law? For the specific example I’m thinking of, see this link here, Page 6, Sec. 7d.
http://www.kslegislature.org/bills/2008/2528.pdf
(I notice it doesn’t explicitly say which way it will be “liberally construed” as I’ve seen in other legislation, although the following sentence make it implicit.)
It means that the act should be broadly applied to effect its purposes, rather than restrictively or technically applied according to its strict terms.
In other words, the legislature is signalling that when courts eventually come to intepret the statute, if there is an ambiguity or conflict, they should resolve it according to the general principles of the legislature was trying to do with the legislation.
As an counter-example, criminal laws are usually strictly construed, meaning that the prosecution must meet all of the exact terms of the statute to get a conviction, because of the rights of the accused.
What does this amount to in practice? Does the legistlatur record its intent somewhere? How liberally is that document to be construed? Etc.
-FrL-
I can only mention how it is interpreted in Australia, but generally the Courts give it as wide a view as possible- extending it to cover as many situations as are allowable. Often they refer back to the introduction into Parliament to see what the intention was. This often happens with Acts that are intended for Industry Assistance- such as the Govt handing out many.
The legislature will often have a section of the law which outlines the intent or reason for the statute, or it may be obvious from the context. In terms of liberal construction, a court must follow the actual text of the legislation, but often that text has significant wiggle room.
For instance, a statute may say that the court (or an administrative official) may extend a deadline “for good cause shown.” That leads inevitably to the question of what constitutes a good cause to be shown, ranging from any old damn-fool excuse to “well, the courthouse was closed because of the earthquake, but I did it just as soon as I dug myself out of the rubble.”
How a court would construe this “liberally” depends on context. If it were some sort of consumer protection legislation, a liberal construction would probably allow free deadline extensions on behalf of the consumer. On the other hand, if it were a law controlling access to some scarce or threatened resource, or ensuring equal consideration of applicants (like contract bidding), a liberal construction would probably discourage extensions other for other than a very strong and well-documented excuse.
Is this actually a defense one can use in court? Vis, “the law is supposed to be liberally interpreted”?
In the example I cited in the OP then, they’re telling the court that they’re supposed to err on the side of an individual right to keep and bear arms when determining whether someone has violated the Kansas CCH statutes?
There will be a legislative history, too (recording somewhere of the debate over the bill, the reasons that were advocated for its passage).
So, in 1994, state sen. Dokes introduces the Internet Tax Freedom Bill, arguing that the good people of Bumblefreak have for too long been burdened by taxes on online commerce.
The bill is enacted: “In furtherance of free commerce in Bumblefreak, whosoever shall buy a product over the AOL with his personal computer shall not have to pay taxes on it. This law shall be liberally construed so as to effectuate its stated purposes.”
Comes 2008, someone’s buying a book through their iPhone. Technically, the statute does not apply, because Dokes never anticipated wireless access. However, the purchaser argues (and probably wins on the basis of so arguing) that Dokes’s and the legislature’s liberal construction provision should extend the tax abatement to him.
So one use is to cover unanticipated but clearly analogous problems that the ratifying body would have intended to cover.
An example can be found in the California Labor Code:
As a result, when a statute’s meaning is in question, the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board is supposed to adopt an interpretation that results in extension of benefits. An example occurs with §3208, which defines an “injury” to mean “any injury or disease arising out of the employment, …” This has been construed to mean virtually anything that can be considered an abnormal condition of the body or brain, including all forms of cumulative trauma. The “liberal construction” statute also results in California workers being compensated regardless of whether or not there are concurrent or pre-existing conditions; if the work resulted in any aspect of the injury, the effect is a compensable injury, and all treatment required to relieve the worker from the effects of that injury must be provided.
Similarly, §3202 has resulted in very liberal interpretations of the “arising out of and occurring in the course of” aspects of work injuries. Thus, California had one of the most expansive rules regarding what you could be doing and still be having a work injury (see, for example, California’s treatment of the “going and coming” rule, which normally acts to bar compensation for injuries sustained en route to and from work).
So, such a statute can have a very significant impact upon how the law in an area will develop.
As I read it, the bill doesn’t really deal with the big question of the individual right to bear arms, but rather the slightly narrower question of where concealed carry may be prohibited and where it must be permitted, both by governmental entities and by private property owners.
On a quick read, I can see some potential ambiguities. For instance, it appears to permit employers from carrying on employer premises, except they cannot prohibit them from having employees having their weapons in private vehicles, even if parked on employer premises. On the other hand, it permits building owners from prohibiting concealed carry in (properly signed) buildings they own, without anything about vehicles. What would happen, however, if an employer owned a building with an indoor garage – could that employer/building owner prohibit employees from keeping weapons in their private vehicles in the building’s garage? As a building owner, they should be able to control weapon possession within the building under the law, but the law implies a right for employees to bring their weapons to work in their cars.
Under a strict construction, a court might find that the employer/building owner has the right, wearing its hat as a building owner, to prohibit weapons in any vehicles in the building’s indoor garage. However, if the court finds that a purpose of the act was to permit employees to bring weapons while traveling to work, it might decide under a liberal construction that the employee’s right to travel and park in a private vehicle with a weapon trump’s the right of an employer/building owner to prohibit weapons.
There are numerous situations where ambiguities or undetermined cases might have to be interpreted, and the “liberal interpretation” clause suggests to the court that it should resolve them based at least in part on what the court thinks the legislature wanted to have happen, rather than looking entirely objectively at the statutory language.