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Important Legal Definitions

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Constitutional & Public Law Doctrines

Definition

A judicial technique where a court imports an implied requirement, standard, or procedural safeguard into the text of a statute to save it from being declared unconstitutional for lacking essential protections.

Example

A statute empowering an inspector to seize private documents without specifying a notice requirement has the requirement of giving a "pre-decisional show-cause notice" read into it by the court to preserve the statute under Article 14.