interpretation
Are there any legal doctrines like the absurdity doctrine that tend to correct legislative undersight or oversight?
<p>Absurdity doctrine is a doctrine used by courts to ignore the plain meaning of a law in cases where the plain meaning would in the court's opinion lead to absurd results. Are there any similar doctrines that attempt to correct legislative flaws by either interpreting a law broadly or narrowly to include or exclude situations where such law can or cannot apply?</p>

<p><a href="/questions/tagged/canada" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;" aria-label="show questions tagged &#39;canada&#39;" rel="tag" aria-labelledby="tag-canada-tooltip-container">canada</a></p>
<p>The Supreme Court of Canada has long been clear that &quot;plain meaning alone is not determinative and a statutory interpretation analysis is incomplete without considering the context, purpose and relevant legal norms&quot; (<em>R. v. Alex</em>, <a href="https://canlii.ca/t/h4mzd#par31" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2017 SCC 37 at para. 31</a>).</p>
<p>Many factors would pull a court to interpret a statute more narrowly or broadly than an acontextual, isolated reading of the words would suggest. Generally, this includes the full text, context, and purpose of the statute. Courts will look to:</p>
<ul>
<li>the words of the provision</li>
<li>the surrounding words and related provisions</li>
<li>the words of the entire statute</li>
<li>the entire statute book</li>
<li>the legislative purpose as revealed through legislative history and the mischief the provision is meant to deal with</li>
<li>the presumption of constitutionality</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>Basically every doctrine of statutory interpretation will pull towards either a narrow or broad reading of a provision. I would hesitate though to call these &quot;corrections&quot; of &quot;legislative flaws&quot; but rather an attempt to give effect to the legislative intent. Even the doctrine of absurdity that you mention is based in an assumption that the legislature does not intend absurd results. Instead of correcting &quot;legislative flaws&quot; this doctrine/canon is a way to <em>avoid</em> judicial error.</p>
<p>However, <em>after</em> a full interpretation of a statute reveals that it is unconstitutional because it is over or under-inclusive, then a court may use the <em>remedies</em> of reading down or reading in (these are constitutional remedies not part of the ordinary act of interpretation). In such a circumstance, where it is a &quot;safe assumption&quot; that the Legislature would have enacted the &quot;corrected&quot; version, the court may declare the correction. See <em>Schachter v. Canada</em>, <a href="https://canlii.ca/t/1fs9l" rel="nofollow noreferrer">[1992] 2 SCR 679</a>.</p>

<h2>Yes, it’s called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">statutory interpretation</a></h2>
<p>Courts recognise that words rarely if ever have a clear and unambiguous “plain meaning”. For example, the words “go” and “put” which are not uncommon in statutes each have several hundred dictionary meanings to choose from. While the correct meaning may be obvious for hundreds or even thousands of fact patterns, sooner or later a case will come along where even simple words and phrases are ambiguous.</p>
<p>Former High Court justice Michael Kirby wrote an illustrative <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MelbULawRw/2011/3.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">article</a> on the matter.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the past decade or so, the High Court of Australia has unanimously endorsed other principles as necessary to the accurate reading of legislation. Amongst the most important of these principles have been:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>that where the applicable law is expressed in legislation the correct starting point for analysis is the text of the legislation and not judicial statements of the common law or even judicial elaborations of the statute;</p>
</li>
<li><p>that the overall objective of statutory construction is to give effect to the purpose of Parliament as expressed in the text of the statutory provisions; and</p>
</li>
<li><p>that in deriving meaning from the text, so as to fulfil the purpose of Parliament, it is a mistake to consider statutory words in isolation. The proper approach demands the derivation of the meaning of words from the legislative context in which those words appear. Specifically, it requires the interpreter to examine at the very least the sentence, often the paragraph, and preferably the immediately surrounding provisions (if not a wider review of the entire statutory context) to identify the meaning of the words in the context in which they are used.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>These and other explanations of the contemporary understanding of statutory interpretation have increasingly taken courts in Australia away from the previous ‘literal’, or so-called ‘objective’ or ‘plain meaning’, approach to interpretation. The notion that a word of the English language has a single, objective and scientific meaning that has only to be discovered has gradually given way to a more candid recognition of the choices that face those who interpret the written law and the way in which values and policy considerations can influence the making of those choices. That realisation presents the third element in contemporary statutory interpretation in Australia. Today, that task requires a combined exercise involving analysis of the text, context and purpose (or policy) of the statute in question.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He then goes on to illustrate the nuts and bolts by discussing <em>Carr v Western Australia</em> which split the High Court on the meaning of the word “interview”.</p>
