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Strict construction is a narrow interpretation of the law, without expanding statutes to achieve judicial goals. Advocates fear judges will exceed legal authority. It has drawbacks, including unclear laws and limited interpretation. Judges may face situations with no existing law to draw on.
Strict construction is a very narrow interpretation of the law, in contrast to looser judicial readings of the law that allow judges to set precedents or create exceptions. Advocates of strict construction tend to come from a conservative point of view and fear that judges will in some cases exceed their legal authority. In a strict construction, people can only look at the law as written to reach a decision and cannot expand the statutes to achieve a particular judicial goal.
This concept is especially prevalent in the United States where some conservatives feel that the judiciary goes beyond the confines of legal texts. While judges have the legal authority to consider extenuating circumstances in a case, look to similar statutes, and draw on case law to reach a decision in a legal matter, strict construction frowns upon this. If a law has a clear meaning, the judge must apply it as written; if, for example, an activity is barred by law, the judge cannot soften the sentence because someone had a valid reason to engage in that activity.
Under this principle, the judiciary is tasked with enforcing the law, while the legislative branch is charged with creating new laws, clearing up confusions, and addressing deficiencies in the legal code. People who advocate a rigid construction of legal interpretation do not want judges to create a body of jurisprudence to draw upon when deliberating legal matters and attempting to reach fair verdicts.
Limited judicial interpretation has its drawbacks. Some laws are unclear or don’t address unique situations, and it can be difficult to determine the intent of the people who made the law, especially in the case of people like the people who drafted the United States Constitution. Their writings may provide some information, but often not enough to assist judges in applying constitutional law. Judges may also face situations that the law has not yet imagined and may have no existing law, simple or otherwise, to draw on to reach a decision and generate a suitable sentence.
A strict construction, despite being about plain reading, can also involve intricate legal snarls of debate about what is meant by specific words and phrases in the law. In the first amendment to the Constitution, for example, the line “Congress shall not make law” appears. This could be interpreted literally as an injunction to pass any law, although it is more commonly interpreted to refer to laws that restrict freedom of speech and religion.
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