LAW AND THE COURTS 233

that the courts do not concern themselves with what Parliament
meant to say; they look simply at the words of the Statute, and
interpret them in the light of common sense and previous legal
decisions. The advantage claimed for this system is that it keeps the
courts to their own rules, free from controversies as to what this or
that political party in power had in mind. If some of the results
are unexpected, that, from the courts* point of view, is a lesson
to Parliament to express itself more clearly. The courts can also
claim that they are helping to enforce the Sovereignty of
Parliament; for by interpreting what the Act says, whether Tit
says it ill or well, they create a situation in which anomalies can
be rectified only by Acts of Parliament. For the Statute Law has
the final voice; whatever the Common Law, or past Statutes, or
decisions based on them, may have prescribed, that can be altered
by a new Statute. By this supremacy of Statutes, English Law,
though springing from different sources, is fashioned into one
system to be administered by all the courts.

Statutes have exceptional importance because they are the
part of the law through which changes can be made. The rules
of Common Law and of Equity were fashioned by a propertied
class and have left the mark of their origin on the whole legal
system. It is by the enactment of new Statutes, and the repealing
of old, that the law can be changed from an instrument of dass
rule into the common protection of the whole people.

The division into Statute and Common Law is historical. •
Two other classifications are required before the arrangement
of courts can be properly understood. First, therfc is the division
into civil and criminal law. All breaches of the'law involve injury
or danger of injury to certain individuals; indeed if ^n action
did not involve this, there would be no need to make it illegal.
In some instances this injury to individuals is the total of the
offence. If I write in a newspaper that so-and-so is unfit for the
position he holds, I have done him an injury, he will bring a civil
action against me for libel, and I may have to pay damages to
him; the law considers that when this has been done his rights