Law and Language Workshop - Luciana Moro

This workshop with Luciana Moro, Lecturer at Deakin Law School, titled "Principles of Statutory Interpretation and Parliament’s Intentions: Re-Examining An Overlooked Relationship" is open to academics (faculty, students and other researchers) interested in law and language from within and outside Western.

Abstract

This paper analyses an often-neglected aspect of the formation of legislative intentions—namely, the role that principles of statutory interpretation play in that process. These principles are usually seen primarily or exclusively as premises of the exercise that judges carry out when they interpret statutes. For example, sceptics about legislative intent see the principles as something that judges rely on to create ‘legislative intentions’ that they then attribute to Parliament. In turn, defenders of the reality of legislative intentions tend to argue that such intentions exist independently of the process of judicial interpretation and the principles that courts apply, and they see the principles as mere evidence of such intentions.

In contrast, this paper examines the principles as premises of the legislative exercise. It shows how legislative drafting and deliberation are informed and shaped by the principles that courts apply when they interpret statutes. It argues that the principles serve as tools for a plurality of legislators to be able to ‘speak as one’. The principles enable this by providing a clear, shared stipulation of what—of all that the members of the group have done, written, said, and read—determines the content of the group’s ‘message’.

The paper argues that this role that the principles play in forming a unified legislative intention whose content is accessible to all legislators (and their advisers and drafters) should feature in any sound account of legislative intent. It argues, further, that this should also be borne in mind by courts when deciding how to develop, revise, or update the principles to make sure they are fit for their role.

About Luciana  Moro

Luciana Moro is a Lecturer at Deakin Law School. She has a PhD from University College London (UCL) and a Magister Juris (MJur) from the University of Oxford, where she was a Chevening and Weidenfeld-Hoffmann scholar. Her undergraduate degree in law is from Torcuato Di Tella University, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Luciana’s main interests are in legal interpretation, public law, legal theory, and criminal law and procedure. Her work has been published in the Modern Law Review. Her doctoral research was funded by a scholarship from UCL’s Faculty of Law. Her thesis defended the legitimacy of rulings in which UK courts adopt an ‘updating’ approach to the interpretation of statutes because they presume that Parliament normally intends this (a presumption often known as the ‘always speaking’ principle).

Luciana’s prior academic positions include roles at UCL and Torcuato Di Tella. She also worked as law clerk at Argentina’s National Public Ministry and as researcher at human rights NGOs.