There is something refreshingly radical in the idea that laws mean what they say. Not what was uttered in some speech during second reading, not what may be uncovered in explanatory notes or interpretive acrobatics—but what is actually written, in black and white, and assented to by the President. That is the law. And if Parliament fails to embed its supposed intentions into the statutory text, then tough luck.
As a declared legal positivist, I hold firmly to the view that law is not a question of purpose, justice, or philosophy—but of authority and text. If a norm has been validly enacted, it binds. If it has not, it does not. What judges think Parliament meant is a curiosity; what Parliament said is the law. The courts are not here to complete what legislators left vague. They are here to apply what was actually enacted.
It is in this context that I followed Lord Sales’ recent Renton Lecture—an impressive and intellectually rich piece of judicial philosophy. I admire the elegance with which he traces the history of statutory interpretation, and the rigour with which he seeks to constrain the purposive approach. Yet for all its refinement, the lecture inadvertently confirms why purposive interpretation, even when carefully disciplined, remains a dangerous temptation. Sales recognises the problem: purpose is often fictional, legislative motives are rarely clear, and textual compromise is a constitutional fact. Still, he maintains that courts can extract purpose through context, structure, and tradition. That is where I respectfully part ways.
Once a statute has been enacted and assented to, its meaning lies in its words—nothing more. If Parliament wanted more nuance, it should have drafted better. If it wanted flexibility, it should have said so. As Lord Simon famously put it in Black-Clawson, the task is to ascertain “the meaning of what Parliament has said, not what Parliament meant to say.” The moment judges drift beyond the text, they risk substituting their own understanding for the authority of Parliament.
Lord Sales offers a method to contain this drift, but I remain unconvinced that it can be truly fenced in. The better solution is simpler: stay with the words. Textualism is not cold formalism—it is fidelity to democratic form. Parliament may be flawed, clumsy, or imprecise. But it is the lawmaker. Judges are not.
If Parliament wished to abolish the Constitution altogether, and it followed lawful form, I would accept that outcome. Not because it is just, but because it is lawful. The same principle applies to every statute, from the most profound to the most banal.
