Constitutional courtA constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established rules, rights, and freedoms, among other things. Prior to 1919, the United States, Canada and Australia had adopted the concept of judicial review by their courts, following shared principles of their similar common law legal systems, which they, in turn, had inherited from British legal practice (the United Kingdom does not have a codified constitution and judicial review of primary legislation is prohibited).
Statutory interpretationStatutory interpretation is the process by which courts interpret and apply legislation. Some amount of interpretation is often necessary when a case involves a statute. Sometimes the words of a statute have a plain and a straightforward meaning. But in many cases, there is some ambiguity in the words of the statute that must be resolved by the judge. To find the meanings of statutes, judges use various tools and methods of statutory interpretation, including traditional canons of statutory interpretation, legislative history, and purpose.
