Legal Technique

Chapter 4

 Interpretation is an indeterminate thing

 Either Plain Meaning Rule or Ratio Legis Rule (Contrasting Rules)
 Justice is cited to understand the objective of the law
 Sometimes, SC use another rule for similar cases
 Subjective Original Intent – when you look for intention of law makers,
look for Journals of Congress to understand the context.
 Rule on Original Meaning and Rule on Progressive Interpretation (Contrasting Rules)
Over time, some words change meaning like Awful – used to mean good.
 Use the rules to your advantage to convince the judge
 Parole Evidence Rule – significant in contracts to mean that the final written contract is
considered to have all the terms the parties have agreed on and cannot introduce external
evidence to prove terms that are not included in the contract.
 Clear Statement Rule – in case of ambiguity in contract, the ambiguity will be resolved against
the drafter to give the responsibility to the drafter to the contract to be more precise in the
language used. This can only be countered before the drafting of the contract by putting a
provisional clause called neutral interpretation.
 Rule of Lenity – synonymous to the Rule of Specificity wherein a penal law needs to specify an
act for it to be valid or else it might be challenged with ambiguity.
 Extensional Pruning – fallacy is done when the speaker asserts claim using words in its
commonly understood meaning and then retreating to a more specific meaning. In example,
drinks can mean alcoholic beverage but one can assert that water falls under the category.