#As noted above, all of the fifty states and the federal government have enacted a complete set of statues (as well as a whole system of administrative rules and orders.) At first blush, one might expect these statutes to provide the sort of legal certainty that has proved so elusive in the common law case method. This expectation is often realized-there are many examples of clear statutes that have been consistently applied by the courts. However, when statutes are not clearly written, or there are major policy disagreements about the issue involved, the same method of approach that the courts learned at the common law has been transferred to the "interpretation" of statutes. Where a court feels strongly that sensible public policy dictates a certain result in a case, it may reach that result, even in the face of a statute that seems to preclude it.
#This is no the favored theory, of courts: legislatures of as the legitimate source of policy decisions, and the courts is said to be to carry out what the legislatures have said (and therefor presumptively wanted). It is only very rarely that any court will ever overtly deviate from a stature-the case report are full of statements avowing acquiescence to statutory directions . in America, this maxim of statutory interpretation is often called the plain meaning rule. In English, that is some time call the rule of literal interpretation. But just as some courts will choose not really to follow past case precedent(while other will nearly always follow it, regardless of their own policy wishes) so too will some court in fact engage in substantial deviation from apparent statutory requirement. This is usually accomplished through a subtle process of interpretation or a mysterious divination of what the legislature's "intent" in enacting the statute in question must have been. Some American courts call this the "legislative purpose" rule, and suggest looking not only at the words of the statute but also its legislative history (such as statements made on the floor or committee reports, if these have been published) and even at the history of the time and the social or economic mischief the statute was designed to remedy. English courts have labeled this process of seeking to find the legislative policy purpose behind a statute as the "golden rule" of interpretation. #