From: Robert Stevens <robert.stevens@law.ox.ac.uk>
To: Gerard McMeel <gerard.mcmeel@guildhallchambers.co.uk>
CC: obligations@uwo.ca
Date: 06/11/2017 11:10:05 UTC
Subject: Re: A powerful side-wind? And some sea changes.

I suppose one question Vos' lecture gives rise to is whether it could possibly be true.

Is Hoffmann right? Is contractual interpretation (indeed the interpretation of any legal instrument) just a matter of the meaning of words? If it is, there is just one approach possible. There would be nothing peculiarly legal about the issue.

Or is it normative, with different jurisdictions, or even.court divisions, adopting different rules, varying between contexts, with none more right than another?

Clearly the law can stipulate for its own idiosyncratic rules of interpretation ("cat is to be read as including dog"). But to stipulate such rules, you'll have to use ordinary language to do so.


I tend towards the Hoffmann view, at least as a starting position.

R

On 6 Nov 2017 10:31 am, Gerard McMeel <gerard.mcmeel@guildhallchambers.co.uk> wrote:
I may be may be making mischief here but can it be argued that a majority of the Supreme Court has abolished the doctrine of consideration in Taurus Petroleum Ltd v State Oil Marketing of the Ministry of Oil, Republic of Iraq [2017] UKSC 64, para [25]? Certainly powerful obiter dicta.

In other good news various changes in English and Welsh judicial personnel may suggest we will see the pendulum swinging back to common sense on contractual construction evidenced in part by a lecture by Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Vos entitled “Contractual Interpretation: Do judges sometimes say one thing and do another?” given at Canterbury University, Christchurch, NZ on 18 October 2017.

Available here:


Gerard McMeel

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