So far you've learned that statutes are created by Parliament, and that they set out many of the legal rules of English law. You might think this sounds straightforward. Such laws ought to be easy to access, understand, and litigate in court, but statutes are far from simple. Our main aspect to this is a problem of language. To understand this problem, consider the following situation. Two men are running from the police, and the police are catching up with them. One man is armed and one is unarmed. The man without the gun, Derek, shouts at the armed man, "Let him have it, Chris", and Chris shoots the pursuing police officer dead. These facts are based on the famous case of Derek Bentley, who was convicted of the murder of the police officer on the basis of having shouted these words. It what was possibly a miscarriage of justice case. Think about the phrase, "Let him have it, Chris." This phrase could be understood in two different ways. The first, is that it could be understood to mean, let him have the gun, Chris. In other words, to give up the gun, or alternatively, it could mean, let him have it in a more colloquial sense, meaning to shoot the police officer, a completely different meaning. Obviously, the man with the gun took it in that second sense, and shot one of his pursuers dead. This is a problem of language. It's often ambiguous and unclear. This causes difficulties in interpretation statutes. What exactly do the words used in the statute actually mean? Let's take another example. This time from a well known book called, The Concept of Law by the legal philosopher, HLA Hart. Imagine a statute which states that no vehicles are allowed in a park. Some interpretations of this written rule are fairly straightforward. For instance, it's probably the case that a car is a vehicle. It would therefore be easy to agree that the rule of no vehicles in the park prohibits cars from driving into the park. We could probably agree that a bicycle ridden into the park may count as a vehicle, too, and that therefore, this rule prohibits bicycles being taken into the park. But what about somebody on roller skates or a child in a pushchair or a person in a wheelchair. These examples are slightly more difficult. Do they count as vehicles or not? So, we can see it will often not be clear exactly what the law is. Can I legally take my roller skates into the park or not? In English law, it is the judges in the courts who have the task of interpreting statutes and resolving difficulties of language. Judges must decide the meaning, scope, and applicability of a statute to particular facts. This is important work. Consider that in a criminal trial, it could mean the difference between a defendant being found innocent or guilty. In the next video, we'll look at how the judges go about this task. Now, have a think about this question. In the case of Adler and George in 1964, the Official Secrets Act 1920 stated that it was an offense to obstruct Her Majesty's forces in the vicinity of a prohibited place. The defendant was arrested for obstructing forces within a prohibited place, an airbase. The defendant argued that he was not in the vicinity of a prohibited place because he was actually in a prohibited place. This shows some of the difficulties of statutory interpretation. If the court were to follow the literal meaning of the words in the statute, then Adler would not have been convicted. In a prohibited place is not technically the same as in the vicinity of a prohibited place. You may have thought this would be a nonsensical result. It would mean that someone near the airbase would be caught by the statute, but someone in the air base itself would not be. In fact, in this case, the whole court extended the literal meaning of the statues slightly to cover the defendant's actions.