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John Bell, "Statutes, Legal Texts and Operational Enactments", in Hanneke van Schooten, ed., Semiotics and Legislation. Jurisprudential, Institutional and Sociological Perspectives, 71-79: A statute should be viewed not as a text, but as an operative enactment, a normative standard. This standard is derived from reading the text both in the light of other texts and of legal values and presumptions. The statute forms part of the legal tradition and is interpreted accordingly. Jackson's idea that meaning is related to the audience rightly emphasises that the idea of a 'message' in relation to a statute is problematic. This is particularly obvious if one examines the way statutes have to be interpreted over time. Each generation reading the text interprets it according to its contemporary relevance to the legal order. Witteveen's 'symbolic' focus is also weakened as a statute is viewed over time. His analogy with music is more powerful in that the statutory text, like the score, is read in the light of reasonable expectations of the law at the time of interpretation. The operative element is to the contemporary significance of the text. e-mail: law6jsb@lucs-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk

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