Here is a great passage from an Australia case (
Mainteck Services v. Stein Heurtey) on contractual interpretation:
What is the legal meaning of a promise to sell "my Dürer drawing", if
the vendor's wife owns a Dürer drawing which is on display in their
home, and the vendor keeps another secretly in his study? What is the
meaning of a gift "to my niece Eliza Woodhouse during her life" in a
will, if the testator had no such niece, but a grandniece of that name,
and another grandniece, who was illegitimate, who lived with him: cf In re Fish; Ingham v Rayner [1894]
2 Ch 83? What is the meaning of cl 7 of the Wild Dog Destruction
Regulation 1999, which provided "The Wild Dog Destruction Regulation
1994 is repealed"? Contracts, wills and statutes are very different
legal texts, to the process of ascertaining whose legal meaning
different rules apply, yet all are based on language, and language is
unavoidably contextual. If I may repeat what I wrote of the uncertain
meaning of the Wild Dog Destruction Regulation in Resolving Conflicts of Laws (Federation
Press 2011), p 13, "The meaning of even the seemingly clearest legal
text can be unclear, hence the importance of attending to context in the
first instance."
In a similar vein, Morissette J.A. recently wrote:
[9]
En ce sens, parler en matière de révision
judiciaire d’une « erreur déraisonnable » risque de créer une
fâcheuse confusion des genres. Il ne peut pas y avoir plusieurs réponses à la
question 2 + 2 = ? Il n’y en a qu’une seule, toutes les autres sont erronées,
aucune d’entre elles n’est « raisonnable » et qualifier les unes ou
les autres de « déraisonnables » n’ajoute strictement rien à la
compréhension des choses. Mais en matière d’interprétation juridique et de
révision judiciaire, on est loin de l’arithmétique élémentaire. Et en l’absence
d’une décision ou d’une interprétation déraisonnable, la réponse à privilégier
est celle donnée par le tribunal administratif que le législateur a désigné
comme le décideur dont ce genre de litige est la spécialité – ici, le TAQ.
Interpretation is not arithmetic and much will turn on context. In administrative law, context will often be best appreciated by an administrative decision-maker, the body designated by the legislature to undertake that interpretive task.
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