INTERPRETATION, in law, is the judicial exposition of the meaning of consti tutions. treaties, statutes, contracts, wills, and other papers, or parts of the same, that affect the rights of parties to any action in a court of justice. It often happens that a suit is determined by the interpretation of written words or phrases of doubtful meaning. so that courts in exercising their in this respect incur a very high responsibility, which is all the greater from the impossibility of reducing interpretation to an exact science under rigid rules. It is necessary that courts should not only have a clear understanding of the general meaning of words and of their application to the matters in hand, but also that they should be able impartially to weigh the whole envi ronment of the cases upon which they are to pass an authoritative judgment, and at the same time cherish an earnest purpose to do exact justice to the parties. Their duty sometimes involves the necessity for very nice, not to say ingenious, discriminations, which tax alike their judgment and conscience. In regard to many things their task has been made easy by well-settled rules and a long line of precedents; but new ques tions often arise, upon which precedents are to be made rather than followed. It some times happens, from a lack of skill in composition, that a single passage, taken by itself, is partially or wholly incompatible with the manifest spirit and intent of a legal docu ment. In such cases courts will exercise a large discretion, in order, if reasonably possible, to make the instrument consistent in itself. Every written paper necessarily assumes the existence of facts or incidents that are either not expressed at all, or expressed only by implication. and that must be considered before the exact meaning
can be determined. An incompetent or unscrupulous judge might do a great wrong by a too close adherence to a particular part of an instrument while failing to give due weight to its spirit and purpose as a whole. Particular words and phrases must be con sidered in their relations to the context and to tile subject matter, not torn from their connection and interpreted by themselves in such a way as to defeat the manifest intent of the instrument. Oral evidence cannot vary the terms of a written document. which must be considered as a whole. Courts are not at liberty to supply by interpretation the unexpressed intent of a. legislature, testator, or contractor. The interpretation must be made in good faith and be in accord with good sense and the common under standing of language, not forced or strained to support a theory fatal to the document itself. 'Inadvertent errors or omissions will be overlooked, and mistakes in orthography and grammar will be lightly retarded where the meaning is clear. It is a general rule that the words of a statute are to be taken in their ordinary sense; but if the statute relates to a particular subject or class of persons, and requires the use of terms not gen erally familiar, their meaning will be determined by the prevailing usage in regard to the subject. The will of a cannot be judicially conjectured. Penal statutes, in deference to the recognized rights of accused persons, are construed with great strictness; courts will not enlarge their scope by strained interpretations even to punish persons of whose guilt they have no moral doubt.