A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs astate, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislativebodies from case law and the regulations issued by government agencies. Statutes are sometimes referred to as legislation or "black letter law". As a source of law, statutes are considered primary authority (as opposed to secondary authority).
Legislation (or "statutory law") is law which has been promulgated (or "enacted") by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it. (Another source of law is judge-made law or case law.) Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to as "legislation" while it remains under consideration to distinguish it from other business. Legislation can have many purposes: to regulate, to authorize, to proscribe, to provide (funds), to sanction, to grant, to declare or to restrict.
Under the Westminster system, an item of primary legislation is known as an Act of Parliament after enactment.
Legislation is usually proposed by a member of the legislature (e.g. a member of Congress or Parliament), or by the executive, whereupon it is debated by members of the legislature and is often amended before passage. Most large legislatures enact only a small fraction of the bills proposed in a given session. Whether a given bill will be proposed and enter into force is generally a matter of the legislative priorities of government.
Legislation is regarded as one of the three main functions of government, which are often distinguished under the doctrine of the separation of powers. Those who have the formal power to create legislation are known as legislators; a judicial branch of government will have the formal power to interpret legislation (see statutory interpretation); the executive branch of government can act only within the powers and limits set by the law.
Essentials of statute
It has been further observed that: "When a question arises as to the interpretation to be put on an enactment, what the Court has to do is to ascertain "the intent of them that make it" and that must of course be gathered from the words actually used in the statute. To arrive at the real meaning, it is always necessary to get an exact conception of the aim, scope and object of the whole Act .To decide the true scope of Act, therefore, we must have regard to all such factors as can legitimately be taken into account in ascertaining the intention of the legislature, such as the history of the legislation and the purposes thereof, the mischief which it intended to suppress and the other provisions of the statute, and construe the language.[1]”The powers, however, are derived from the statute. These are the rules of the game and it has to decide according to these rules.[2]The validity of the statute cannot depend upon whether in a given case it operates harshly.[3] Besides, legislative competence there is assumption that the statute is constitutionally valid and the statute is not hit by the Constitution which the fountain source of the statutes. In the case of non-synchronism between the statute and the constitution the provisions of the constitution would prevail. With the rapid development of modern administrative law, the importance of legal interpretation is continually increasing, in proportion to the growing size of our administrative system and the complexity of the issues it must address. Legal interpretation, as a separate discipline, is therefore bound to become an essential part of the knowledge, skills and abilities that contemporary jurists must possess. Statute is a legal document and is authored according to some basic principles. It evidences the intention of the legislature as to what is the likely shape of the law for which it has been enacted. Statute comprises many parts. The practice is almost common all over the world with marginal differences in the style of presentation of the parts of the stautes. As the statute is meant for the public good it is presumed that the ordinary public will read it and use it. For this reason that the legislature is expected to use the language that is not legal or hyper technical. The language of the statute should be fairly simple as is commonly understood by any person having the working knowledge of that language. It is presumed that legislation would be a simple piece of prose. The document should be comprehensive and should contain the primary reason of its being into existence. This is well explained by the words employed in the text of the statute. The words themselves are meaningless unless these are put in a sentence in the form of a sub-clause, clause or the provision or the section. The words are the basic building block of the entire structure of the statute. The clauses and the provisions are suitably placed so that there is coherence in the statute and that it should be able to converse with the reader and vice versa and convey that was originally proposed or intended.
Statute is an intimation to the all concerned about the Law
In this, as in most cases, the statute should be treated as "the formal and complete intimation to the citizen of a particular rule of the law which he is enjoined, sometimes under penalty, to obey and by which he is both expected and entitled to regulate his conduct[4]"
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