Greek and Latin - DDT's new feature

By Vijay Kumar

Today’s phrase: ut res magis valeat quam pereat - the Rules must be interpreted to give them useful effect. The International Court of Justice once observed, "The principle of interpretation expressed in the maxim: ut res magis valeat quam pereat, often referred to as the rule of effectiveness, cannot justify the Court in attributing to the provisions…a meaning which …would be contrary to their letter and spirit.

In Tinsukhia Electric Supply Co. Ltd. v. State of Assam [AIR 1990 SC 123], the law was laid down as

"The courts strongly lean against any construction, which tends to reduce a statute to a futility. The provision of a statute must be so construed as to make it effective and operative, on the principle "ut res magis valeat quam pereat". It is, no doubt, true that if a statute is absolutely vague and its language wholly intractable and absolutely meaningless, the statute could be declared void for vagueness. This is not in judicial review by testing the law for arbitrariness or unreasonableness under Article 14; but what a court of construction, dealing with the language of a statute, does in order to ascertain from, and accord to, the statute the meaning and purpose which the legislature intended for it"

More law, less justice. -- Cicero, De Officiis (44 B.C.)