The Nature of Legislative Intent
Richard Ekins
Abstract
Is legislative intent a fiction? The legislative assembly is a large, diverse group rather than a single person and it seems a mystery how the intentions of the individual legislators might somehow add up to a coherent, complex group intention. This book elucidates the nature of legislative intent, arguing that in enacting a statute the well-formed legislature forms and acts on a detailed intention, which is the legislative intent. The foundation of the argument is an analysis of how the members of purposive groups act together by way of common plans, sometimes forming complex group agents. Th ... More
Is legislative intent a fiction? The legislative assembly is a large, diverse group rather than a single person and it seems a mystery how the intentions of the individual legislators might somehow add up to a coherent, complex group intention. This book elucidates the nature of legislative intent, arguing that in enacting a statute the well-formed legislature forms and acts on a detailed intention, which is the legislative intent. The foundation of the argument is an analysis of how the members of purposive groups act together by way of common plans, sometimes forming complex group agents. The book extends this analysis to the legislature, considering what it is to legislate and how members of the assembly cooperate to legislate. It argues that to legislate is to choose to change the law for some reason: the well-formed legislature has the capacity to consider what should be done and to act to that end. This argument is supported by reflection on the centrality of intention to the nature of language use. The book then explains in detail how members of the assembly form and act on joint intentions, which do not reduce to the intentions of each member, before outlining some implications of this account for the practice of statutory interpretation.
Keywords:
legislative intent,
group agency,
legislature,
assembly,
language use,
statutory interpretation
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199646999 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2013 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199646999.001.0001 |
