An Introduction To The Literal Rule

So what is the literal rule?
Under this rule courts will give words their plain ordinary and literal meaning, even if the result is not very reasonable.

 R v Judge of the City of London Court (1892)
Which is said in short? It  is parliaments job to make the law and it is the judges job to uphold the law. Judges must also apply the law, taking into account the plain, natural and ordinary meaning of the word.

It is not a very constructive attitude towards applying words in legislation.
Parliament would not have intended the affects of any acts to be absurd, however, it does mean that judges are not imposing their ideas of what they think the law should be, therefore, they are not constructing the law but interpreting it.

1st example of this is Whiteley v Chapel (1868)
The facts of the case:
A man uses the vote of a dead person to vote in an election. There was an act which stated that it was a crime to impersonate a dead person but it raised the question as to whether the dead person is entitled to a vote. According to the literal rule, he was found not guilty. The act said it is a criminal offence to impersonate "any person entitled to a vote".

2nd example is Fisher v Bell (1960)
This case is an example of where parliament made a mistake and the courts picked up on the error which resulted in parliament re-writing the act. This case involved the interpretation of section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959. The act said "any person who manufactures, sells or hires or offers, sell, hire, lend or give to any person any knife which has blade which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife, sometimes known as a flick knife, shall be an offence.

Technically, it was not sold and firstly there was an invitation to treat then there was an offer and then there was an acceptance to the offer, which through the literal rule means technically there was no offer made. Because of that, through the literal rule they were not guilty. Due to the absurd result, parliament had to re-write the whole act.

3rd example is London and North Eastern Railway Berriman (1946)
Facts: Mr Berriman was oiling the railway and maintaining the line when he was hit and killed. His wife tried to get compensation under the Fatal Accidents Act which stated rail employees relatives where entitled to compensation if their relatives were killed whilst "relaying or repairing tracks and no lookout had been provided". A look out had not been provided but the claim failed because he was not "relaying or repairing" but rather maintaining the track. So using the literal rule, the court decided that Mrs Berrimen was not entitled to compensation

Advantages and Disadvantages
AD:
Uses plain, ordinary grammatical meaning of the word.
Avoids Judicial law making
Upholds parliament's intention.
Respects parliamentary supremacy
Encourages precision in drafting
Any who can read the law can understand it
Promotes certainty in the law
Reduces litigation
DISAD:
Leads to absurd results in the law
Leads to unjust decisions
Assumes unattainable perfection in drafts man ship
Fails to recognise that the English language itself is ambiguous and words have different meanings
Leads to loopholes in the law
Judges tend to over emphasise the literal meaning of statutes, failing to take into consideration their wider meaning
Doesn't consider developments in the English language
The literal rule is useless where the answer to a problem simply cannot be found in the words of the statute.