Case Notes
| DOI | 10.1093/slr/5.1.191 |
| Pages | 191-194 |
| Date | 01 October 1984 |
| Year | 1984 |
| Published By | Oxford University Press |
CASE
NOTES 191
arrived at the point where arrest is lawful because temporary imprison-
ment may produce a confession, the wedge for discretionary arrest at the
instance of the executive seems to have been well and truly inserted and
driven home.
It is here contended that the purpose of arrest enunciated by Scott LJ.
has been the purpose for which statutory powers of arrest without warrant
have been conferred in the very many statutes enacted before and after his
pronouncement. The Criminal Law Act 1967 was no different in this
respect: no other purpose was found in its wording. Nor can it be imputed
by referring to the proper purposes to which detention following arrest
may be put. They pre-suppose a lawful exercise of the power to arrest
which gives rise to the detention. Thus the practice of questioning persons
taken into custody is of course recognised by rule
1
of the Judges* Rules, as
Lord Diplock asserts. But it is hard to see how that relates to the purpose
for which the power of arrest was given.15
If the purpose of arrest is to enable criminal proceedings to be
instituted, it must be
ultra vires
to arrest in the hope of achieving something
(the confession) without which no such proceedings can properly be
begun. But this case is highest authority for the proposition that the
statutory purpose is to confer a discretion to arrest suspects where it is
thought that incarceration may produce the self-incrimination which
alone will enable criminal proceedings to be instituted. It would seem that
the draftsmen of these provisions for arrest without warrant have
(unwittingly?) expressed that purpose, which makes this power of arrest
vastly greater than the power of arrest conferred by the Common Law.
G.R. Sneath,
Lecturer in Law, University of Birmingham.
Short Notes on Two Cases
British Concrete Pipe Association
[1983] 1 All E.R. 203; [1983] I.C.R. 215,
C.A.
The case concerned undertakings and contempt and restrictive practices.
Several points of statutory construction and interpretation arose, judg-
ment of Sir John Donaldson M.R.
(i) Ordinary meaning
"Our task ... is to construe the Act... and in so doing the prima
facie rule is that words have their ordinary meaning. But that is
subject to the qualification that if, giving words their ordinary
meaning, we are faced with extraordinary results which cannot have
been intended by Parliament, we then have to move on to a second
stage in which we re-examine the words and see whether they must in
all the circumstances have been intended by Parliament to have a
different meaning or a more restricted meaning."
1
p.
1059c.
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