The three schools (the exam's banker): The intentionalist theory (the intention's search): the interpretation = the legislature's intention's discovery — the legislature as the author, the statute as the message, the court as the reader (the 19th-century orthodoxy); the critiques: the collective-body's "intention" is a fiction (the multi-member legislature's mind); the enacted-text as the only certain intention (the legislative-history's contestable status); The textualist theory (the text's primacy): the meaning = the enacted words' ordinary sense (the text's objective meaning — not the unenacted subjective purpose); the craft: the context, the whole-Act reading, the canons; the faces: the plain-meaning rule; the critiques: the ambiguity's residue (the text alone under-determines); The purposivist theory (the purpose's priority): the interpretation = the statute's PURPOSE served (the teleological reading: the law's reason as the meaning's guide); the craft: the mischief, the objectives, the consequences; the critiques: the purpose's own contestability (the court's chosen purpose as the disguised preference). The newer theories: the dynamic- statutory-interpretation (the present-day adaptation — Eskridge's line); the new- textualism (the sophisticated plain meaning — the canons' revival); the law-and-language approaches (the pragmatics, the speech-act theory's use); the consequentialism (the interpretation whose consequences are best — the practical-reason school). The Nepal position (the paper's home-side): the eclectic judiciary — the literal base (the 2010 Act's infrastructure) + the purposive growth (the modern Supreme Court's rights-era method — Unit 8's trends); the theories' blend in the case-law (the unit-9 cases' craft).
Exam Focus Long questions: (i) The meaning-and-necessity (the why-interpret essay); (ii) The kinds' catalogue (the seven-fold list); (iii) The three theories (the intentionalist-textualist- purposivist craft — the unit's banker). Short questions: interpretation vs construction; the authentic interpretation; the dynamic interpretation; the casus omissus. Trick areas: (i) INTERPRETATION finds the words' meaning; CONSTRUCTION draws the legal effect — the distinction's precision (though loosely interchanged); (ii) The intentionalist "legislative intention" is a contested FICTION (the collective body's mind) — the theory's critique; (iii) The authentic (primary-in-the-other-sense) interpretation belongs to the LEGISLATURE (the declaratory Acts) — not the courts; (iv) The method depends on the STATUTE's nature (the penal-strict vs beneficial-liberal) — the kinds' theory-selection craft.