ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces ‘legislation’: the first of four sources of English legal rules discussed in detail in this book. The others are common law/case law (see Chapter 4), the law relating to European human rights and fundamental freedoms, and European Community law (see Chapter 5). The chapter begins with a general introduction to these areas and then turns to the in-depth consideration of legislation. The chapter uses both text and diagrams to explain the standard layout of legislation and the need to concentrate on English language skills in order to understand the fundamental importance of prepositional words in legislation. Legislation at the macro-level of a whole statute, and at the micro-level of individual elements of legislation (sections, sub-sections) are discussed and issues of interpretation and rule handling raised. The relationship between common law/case law and legislation is considered in detail in Chapter 4.
