🫵Applying #Laws Across Time: Disentangling the ‘Always Speaking’ #LegalPrinciples (Timestamps)

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Abstract:

Common-law judges frequently claim to apply the ‘always speaking’ principle. But they recognise that they are not clear on what it means, with Lord Leggatt recently calling the metaphor ‘enigmatic’. In this article, I seek to clarify this by showing that the ‘always speaking’ metaphor is associated with at least four different types of principle, each of which responds to a distinct issue (although there is a common theme: change over time). I explore the origins of the ‘always speaking’ metaphor, distinguish the four issues and explain how they relate. I argue that it is important to disentangle the four types of ‘always speaking’ principle, with a focus on distinguishing principles of dynamic (versus originalist) interpretation from principles that empower judges to strain or ‘recast’ legislation to deal with new developments sensibly. In doing so, I analyse and critique the judgments in the recent UK Supreme Court case of News Corp.

..."The meaning issue—as with the operation issue—often arises for non-legal utterances. A famous example of static linguistic meaning is Queen Anne reportedly saying in 1707, of the newly built St Paul’s Cathedral in London, that it is ‘awful, artificial, and amusing’.26 The linguistic meaning of those three adjectives has changed radically since 1707: ‘awful’ meant awe-inspiring; ‘artificial’ meant highly artistic; and ‘amusing’ meant thought-provoking..."

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Applying Laws Across Time
00:12:01 - Abstract
00:01:09 - 1. Introduction
00:03:25 - 2. The Operation Issue - A. Types of Utterance
00:05:34 - B. Present-Tense Drafting
00:08:35 - C. Laws and the Operation Issue
00:15:01 - 3. The Meaning Issue
00:22:27 - 4. The Novelty Issue
00:33:37 - 5. The Implicit Modification Issue
00:41:10 - 6. Relating the Issues
00:47:09 - 7. News Corp:Hamblen..A. Defining ‘Always Speaking’ Principle?
00:50:27 - B. The ‘Leading Cases on the Always Speaking Principle’
01:10:36 - C. The Decision in News Corp
01:11:41 - 8. News Corp: Lord Leggatt’s Concurrence
01:15:31 - 9. Conclusion

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.

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