Millar v Taylor as a Precedent for Statutory Interpretation

Abstract

It is commonly believed that the rule forbidding recourse to legislative historyi as an aid to statutory interpretation began in 1769 with the case of Millar v Taylor.ii Justice Frankfurter’s view is representative: In Millar v. Taylor the principle of construction was laid down in words, which have never, so far as I know, been seriously challenged, by Willes J. as long ago as in 1769: ‘The sense and meaning of an Act of Parliament must be collected from what it says when passed into law; and not from the history of changes it underwent in the house where it took its rise.’(Frankfurter, 1947: 540–41) This claim has been repeated by scholars such as Odgers, Craies, Bennion, Vogenaur (Bennion, 1993: 151; Craies and Hardcastle, 1907: 122; Odgers, 1939: 219; Vogenauer, 2001: 671), and relatively recently by Scalia and Garner, who eloquently restated the basic understanding: "In English practice, a complete disregard of legislative history remained the firm rule from 1769 when it was first announced, until 1992, when the House of Lords changed the practice." (Scalia and Garner, 2012: 369)