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“Always speaking”? Interpreting the present tense in statutes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Neal Goldfarb
Neal Goldfarb*
Affiliation:
Butzel Long Tighe Patton Attorneys at Law, Washington, D.C.
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Abstract

This article takes a critical look through the lens of linguistics at the “always-speaking” principle in law — an influential principle that is recited in materials on legislative drafting as the justification for using the present tense, adopted in many common-law jurisdictions as a principle of interpretation, and accepted as a foundation for the linguistic analysis of the use of tense in statutes. The article concludes that the principle is an inadequate basis for interpreting or analysing statutes, for at least two reasons: the interpretive results that the principle is intended to support are explainable in terms of widely accepted principles in the analysis of tense, without any need to posit special principles that apply only to statutes; and the interpretations that would be required if the always-speaking principle were taken seriously would in many cases probably be regarded as unnatural by native speakers of English.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article étudie dans une perspective linguistique le principe de 1’« énonciation continuelle» tel qu’utilisé en droit. Il s’agit d’un principe qui, dans les textes traitant de rédaction législative, est invoqué pour justifier l’emploi du temps présent, qui a été adopté comme principe d’interprétation dans le droit commun de bien des pays ou territoires et qui a été accepté comme base de l’analyse linguistique de l’emploi des temps dans les lois. Cet article affirme que ce principe constitue une base inadéquate pour l’interprétation et l’analyse des lois, et ce pour au moins deux raisons : les résultats interprétatifs que le principe est censé soutenir peuvent s’expliquer en termes de principes largement acceptés dans l’analyse des temps, sans aucun besoin d’énoncer des principes spéciaux qui ne s’appliquent qu’aux lois; et les interprétations qui en découleraient, si le principe de 1’«énonciation continuelle» était pris au sérieux, seraient dans bien des cas considérés comme non naturelles par des locuteurs natifs de l’anglais.

Keywords

always speakingpresent tensestatutory interpretationlegislative draftingtime of orientation«énonciation continuelle»temps présentinterprétation des loisrédaction législativemoment d’orientation
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 58 , Issue 1: Temporal and modal dimensions of legal discourses , March 2013 , pp. 63 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2013

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Legal materials cited

Statutes and similar materials

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