'IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD': THE ROLE OF TEXT IN THE INTERPRETATION OF STATUTES* MICHAELBISHOPt Pupil member of the Cape Bar;JSD Candidate, Columbia Law School JASON BRICKHILL* Member of thejohannesburg Bar, Counsel, Legal Resources Centre In five recent decisions the Constitutional Court has interpreted legislation in a manner that is incompatible with the words of the statutes. This article criticises the court's approach in these cases and argues for a return to the carefdly calibrated approach to interpretation that the court has always advocated. We describe the court's current interpretive doctrine to set the scenefor the chage that the court has been unfaithful to that approach. We then discuss each of the five cases - SAPS, Chirwa, Berrie Van Zyl, African National Congress and Van Vuren. Read to'gether, these cases indicate that, when it suits it, the court is wvillingq to ignore legislative text. This unrestrained interpretive method threatens the rule of law and the separation ofpowers without necessarily securing more just outcomes. We arue that there are three drivers of this approach: practitioners' and courts' over-use of section 39(2) rather than direct application; an academic legal culture that encourages disregard for the text; and the single-step structure of the interpretive nethod. We propose a tivo-stage approach to miitigate these risks: first, identifying the available meanings and explaining how they fit the text; and, secondly, relying on the values of the Constitution to choose a meaning. We do not callfor a return to the arid literalisi of yesteryear, and support the court's attempt to secure just outcomes, but arque that it can and should do so without sacrificing the text. '"Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" "Come, we shall have some fun now!" thought Alice. "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. - I believe I can guess that," she added aloud. "Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" said the March Hare. "Exactly so," said Alice. "Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that 'I see what I eat'is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!" "You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!" * The Bible (KingJames Version) John 1:1. We would like to thank the following people for comments on earlier drafts of this article: Alistair Price, James Fowkes, Richard Stacey, Steven Budlender, Clare Ballard, Alfred Cockrell, Tembeka Ngcu- kaitobi, Danie Smit, Kent Greenawalt, the participants in Prof Greenawalt's 2009 seminar on interpretation, and the anonymous referees. The views in this article, and any mistakes, remain our own. t BALLB LLM (UP) LLM (Columbia). * LLB (UCT) MSt (Oxon). 681