STATUTE CONSTRUCTION AIDS
Known as the Code Construction Act
The act spans §§ 311.001 to 311.036 (27 sections).
Applied in 40 court decisions — leading case Boykin v. State (1991)
Most recently applied in Schunior, Victor Manuel Jr. (November 2016)
Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 479, Sec. 1, eff
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
In construing a statute, whether or not the statute is considered ambiguous on its face, a court may consider among other matters the:
(1) object sought to be attained;
(2) circumstances under which the statute was enacted;
(3) legislative history;
(4) common law or former statutory provisions, including laws on the same or similar subjects;
(5) consequences of a particular construction;
(6) administrative construction of the statute; and
(7) title (caption), preamble, and emergency provision.
Official source: Texas Constitution and Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Texas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.