The courts have a restricted role therefore cannot give their opinion so there is no bias. Thirdly, law making is left to those who elected so is constitutionally sound from our perspective. However, disadvantages include the absurd result not enacting the will of parliament, for example in the case of Berriman (1946) it was not parliaments intention not to allow someone who was killed by a train not to have compensation. The law commission report states that the literal rule assumed ‘an unattainable perfection in draftmanship’, and ‘ignores the limitations of language, Thus, ‘not infrequently’’ even the house of lords have differed over the ‘so-called “plain meaning” of …show more content…
Despite this there is no clear meaning of what an absurd result is, therefore subjective as what may be absurd to one may be different to another. For example, in the R v Allen case, Allen would have thought being found guilty of bigamy was an absurd result. Furthermore, this rule could not be used in cases like Berriman as it was not absurd enough despite being unfair. The golden rule is also unpredictable as how can you follow word of statute if judges can change it to suit the requirements at the time. Lastly, it lacks guidelines as there is no criteria that judges need to follow apart from the fact it avoids an absurd result. What the law commission report had to say about the golden rule is that it sets a ‘purely negative standard, by reference to absurdity, inconsistency, or inconvenience, but provides no clear means to test the existence of these characteristics or to measure their quality or extent’. This means we are looking at the failing of parliament where they would have got the wording