§ 37.002.Short Title, Construction, Interpretation

A title and two interpretive directions, and both directions matter in practice.

This chapter may be cited as the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act.

The chapter is remedial; its purpose is to settle and to afford relief from uncertainty and insecurity with respect to rights, status, and other legal relations; and it is to be liberally construed and administered.

That sentence is the most quoted in the chapter, and it does real work. A court asked whether a particular controversy is suitable for declaratory relief begins from an instruction to construe the act liberally.

"Uncertainty and insecurity" names the harm the act addresses. Ordinary litigation responds to a wrong already done; this responds to a doubt about where the parties stand, before anyone has to act on a guess.

Naming the chapter remedial has a further consequence. Remedial statutes are construed to advance the remedy rather than narrowly, which is the same instruction stated in different words.

Subsection (c) points outward twice. The chapter is to be construed to make uniform the law of those states that enact it, and to harmonize, as far as possible, with federal laws and regulations on the subject of declaratory judgments and decrees.

The federal reference is unusual in a uniform act. Federal declaratory practice under the federal declaratory judgment act is well developed, and the direction to harmonize makes that body of law relevant here.

"As far as possible" is the qualification. Federal practice includes doctrines with no Texas counterpart, and harmonization gives way where the systems diverge.