Important Legal Definitions

A doctrine establishing that the best and surest mode of construing an ancient statute or charter is to examine how the words were understood, interpreted, and applied by contemporaneous authorities at the time the statute was enacted.

In Senior Electric Inspector v. Laxminarayan Chopra, the Supreme Court held that the maxim contemporanea expositio applies primarily to ancient statutes and cannot be applied mechanically to modern progressive socio-economic statutes.