LAW OF INTERPRETATION OF DEEDS AND STATUTES - INTERNAL AIDS - DOCUMENTS- NON-OPERATIVE PARTS (2) скачать в хорошем качестве

LAW OF INTERPRETATION OF DEEDS AND STATUTES - INTERNAL AIDS - DOCUMENTS- NON-OPERATIVE PARTS (2)

INTERNAL AIDS TO INTERPRETATION: NON-OPERATIVE PARTS OF DOCUMENTS AND STATUTES This lecture occupies a critical position within the Modern Purposive Approach (MOPA). Having established in Lecture One that interpretation is holistic, contextual, and purposive, this lecture operationalises that method by examining internal aids, beginning with non-operative parts. These elements are frequently dismissed as drafting formalities. That assumption is doctrinally incorrect. Though non-operative parts do not themselves create rights or obligations, they often frame meaning, explain intention, and condition the scope of operative provisions. Misunderstanding them has led to serious interpretive error in both statutory and contractual contexts. Non-operative parts are internal features of a document that do not independently alter legal relations but assist interpretation by providing context, explanation, or evidence. Drawing on Dennis Dominic Adjei, they include dates, descriptions of parties, recitals, headings, marginal notes, punctuation, jurats, and attestation clauses. Their interpretive force derives solely from their relationship with the operative text. They may illuminate ambiguity but cannot override clear operative language. Dates provide temporal context, not substantive command. In registrable instruments, effectiveness depends on registration, not dating. A missing date does not invalidate an instrument. The relevance of dates arises only where issues of priority, limitation, retrospectivity, or statutory compliance are engaged. In non-registrable documents, dates assist in determining when rights accrued or which law applied, but remain contextual rather than dispositive. Parties and capacity illustrate the interpretive significance of non-operative parts. While identification of parties is essential for validity, party description is treated as non-operative for interpretive purposes. The law adopts a functional approach: parties may be described in any manner sufficient to identify them. Courts routinely interpret descriptions, signatures, trade names, assumed names, or class-based identification to ascertain who is bound, applying an objective test grounded in commercial common sense. Extrinsic evidence is admissible to identify parties, as a recognised exception to the parol evidence rule, but not to contradict a document that unequivocally identifies them. Party identity is a fundamental question of fact, going to the very existence of the contract. Recitals are a central internal aid. They form part of the document and constitute agreed background facts or narrative context against which operative provisions are construed. Recitals explain purpose, background, and factual assumptions. They may resolve ambiguity but cannot control clear operative terms. The settled hierarchy is threefold: where recitals are clear and the operative part is ambiguous, recitals may govern; where recitals are ambiguous and the operative part is clear, the operative part prevails; where both are clear but inconsistent, the operative provisions prevail. Under MOPA, recitals are particularly valuable in identifying mischief and purpose, but courts remain alert to the danger of importing obligations not found in the operative text. Jurat and attestation clauses are protective and evidential, not substantive. Their purpose is to safeguard illiterate or vulnerable parties by ensuring informed consent. Modern Ghanaian jurisprudence has decisively rejected rigid formalism. The presence or absence of a jurat raises only a rebuttable presumption. What matters is whether evidence shows that the illiterate understood the document, consented freely, and appreciated its consequences. Courts must not fetishise form at the expense of justice. Punctuation occupies a subordinate but not irrelevant role. Historically mistrusted because printers, not legislators, supplied punctuation, it is not part of the law itself. Nevertheless, punctuation may assist in suggesting meaning and resolving ambiguity, though meaning must never turn solely on a comma or full stop. It may clarify sense, but it cannot create it. Conclusion: Non-operative parts do not command, but they explain. Properly understood, they are indispensable tools of interpretation. Evaluated functionally rather than formalistically, they promote certainty, coherence, and justice within the modern purposive framework.