Introduction

• Author: Susan Barker, Erica Anderson
• Pages: 1-4

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Introduction

Statutory interpretation is the Cinderea of legal scholarship. Once

scorned and neglected, conned to the kitchen, it now dances in the

baroom.1

Researching legislative intent can be a labour-intensive and time-

consuming task for legal researchers: we are oen required to nd

discussion about — and the meaning or intent of — a particular word

within a mountain of debate and reports. is type of research involves

tracing how a piece of legislation evolved over time and then nding

out what legislators said about the change(s) in Hansard and in com-

miee. is kind of research can also involve nding the material that

inspired the legislation: law reform commission reports, royal com-

missions or government reports, and many other materials.

Legislative intent is generay discerned by looking at the legisla-

tive evolution (changes over time) and legislative history (“everything

that relates to [the] conception, preparation and passage . . . from the

earliest proposals to royal assent”)2 of a particular statute or section

thereof. You could say that researching legislative intent is like

1 WM Eskridge Jr, Dynamic Statutory Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1994) at 1.

2 Ruth Suivan, Suivan on the Construction of Statutes, 6th ed (Markham, ON: Lexis-

Nexis, 2014) at 679.