‘Still the words of the statute are not the statute itself; the law expressed by the words is not the same thing as the words which express it. Thus a person imperfectly acquainted with English may know the words of the statute, but he will not know the law. The same is true to a greater or less degree of anyone who comes to the reading of a statute without sufficient legal knowledge.
The interpretation of a statute requires not only a knowledge of the meaning of legal technical terms, but also of the whole system of law of which the statute forms a part; in particular it requires a knowledge of the legal rules of interpretation, which are themselves rules of law’.
(William Geldart, Introduction to English Law: (Originally Elements of English Law), 11th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), р. 5.
