Contemporanea Expositio
The maxim Contemporanea Expositio holds that a construction which has been long adopted and publically acted upon, will not be lightly disturbed by the courts.
The rule of construction by reference to ‘contemporanea expositio‘ is a well established rule for interpreting a statute. This rule has been clearly expressed in Crawford on Statutory Construction (1940).
The validity of this rule was also recognized in Baleshwar Bagarti, where Justice Mookerjee states “It is a well-settled principle of interpretation, Courts in construing a statute will give much weight to the interpretation put upon it, at the time of its enactment and since, by those whose duty it has been to construe, execute and apply it” and this statement of the rule was quoted with approval by SC in Deshbandhu, [1979].
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