Some Recent Cases in Administrative Law
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1952.tb02805.x |
| Date | 01 December 1952 |
| Published date | 01 December 1952 |
Some Recent
Cases
in
Administrative
Law
By
PROFESSOR
HARRY
STREET
The
last
sutvey
by
Professor Street,
Professor
of
Law
in
the
University
of
Nottingham,
was
published in
the
issue
of
Autumn,
1951.
Statutory Interpretation
NCREASINGLY
often administrative
I
law cases rest
on
the interpretation
of
a statute. Are the courts to look
for the purpose of Parliament or
are they to apply the literal inter-
pretation methods of private law
used in construing wills and deeds
?
In
Magm and
St.
Mellons
R.D.C.
v.
Newport Corporation,'
Denning,
L.
J.,
said in the
Court
of Appeal
:-
"
We do not sit here to
pull
the language of Parliament and
of
Ministers to pieces and make
nonsense of
it.
That is an easy
thing
to do, and
it
is a
thing
to
which lawyers are too often prone.
We sit here to find out the intention
of Parliament and of Ministers
and
carry
it
out,
and we do
this
better by filling in the gaps and
making sense of the enactment
than
by opening
it
up to destructive
analysis."
This
opinion
was emphatically
rejected by the House
of
Lords.B
Lord Simonds said
:-
''
. .
.
the general proposition
that
it
is the duty of the court to
find out the intention of Parliament
-and not
only
of Parliament but
of
Ministers also-cannot by any
means be supported. The duty
of
the
court
is to interpret the
words that the legislature
has
used."
Two cases mentioned in a previous
note8 have since gone to the House
of
Lords, where the decision in each
case turned
on
statutory interpre-
tation. In
Earl FitzwilZiam's Went-
worth Estates Co.
v.
Minister
of
Housing and Local
Government4
the
House
of
Lords confirmed the validity
of
a compulsory purchase order
made by the Central Land Board
where 'the owner refused to sell at
existing use value.
After
a detailed
examination
of
the Act,
it
held that
the Act authorised the Board to
acquire compulsorily in order to
assess and collect development
charges, Lord MacDermott adding
that
in
these circumstances
it
was
beside the point that members of
the Board might have been moved
by considerations
of
policy which
would not constitute a statutorily
authorised purpose.
It
will
be recalled that
in
HowelZ
Y.
Falmouth Boat Construction Co.
Ltd6
the Court of Appeal held that
a
contractor
could
sue
for
work
done
in
repairing ships during the
war under an oral licence which the
Admiralty put in writing after the
work was completed. Denning,
L.
J.,
had said
obiter
that
if
a
government
officer assumed an authority which
he did not possess (i.e. to grant an
oral licence) then the Crown
was
bound by that assumption. The
House of Lords rejected
this
reason-
ing, saying that
if
the act of the
official were done
in
the
face of a
statutory prohibition then the Crown
could not be prevented from setting
up
its illegality. Although the
House also rejected the view that
'1950 2
All
E.R.
1226
at
1236.
*1952
A.C.
189
at
191.
8Public
Administration
(1951),
p.
278.
'1952
A.C.
362.
"951
A.C.
837.
369
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