Legal Text as a Description of a Possible World: Preliminary Discussion of a Model of Legal Interpretation

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Matczak
Keyword(s):  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Preliminary Discussion

Sophisticated Textualism and Sanctions

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 343-357
Author(s):  
Tomasz Zyglewicz
Keyword(s):  
Legal Language ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Legal Text

In this paper I present a difficulty for Matczak’s sophisticated textualism. I argue that, due to his claims about the descriptive character of legal language and the unity of the possible world postulated by the legal text, his theory cannot successfully account for norms that express factors that an authority should take into account when determining the measure of sanction. I reject two replies to this objection that do not require a modification of Matczak’s account. The upshot of my argument is that in order to accommodate norms pertaining to sanctions, Matczak should drop the assumption of unity of the possible world described by the legal text.

scholarly journals On an Interpreter’s Game with the Legal Text and Extratextual Factors in the Derivative Concept of Legal Interpretation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Jabłoński ◽  
Przemysław Kaczmarek
Keyword(s):  
Legal Culture ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Derivative Concept

The aim of this paper is to show the derivative concept of legal interpretation from the point of view of the structure of limits of the juridical power. This structure includes the politico-legal culture, the legal text, the juridical culture, and personal factors, such as ethical and aesthetic judgements. These days, the derivative concept is the most influential Polish theory of legal interpretation. According to this concept the process of interpreting the law is a kind of a game between the legal text and extratextual factors, which are treated as extratextual limits of juridical power. On the one hand, the legal text does not determine the full meaning of the law, although it has great importance for it. On the other hand, the derivative concept precisely identifies certain others factors that are relevant for the content of law.

Hermeneutics

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-140
Author(s):  
Mélanie Samson
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
Meaningful Material ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter assesses hermeneutics, which can refer to an art, a methodological paradigm, or a philosophical movement. In its primary sense, hermeneutics is the art of interpreting texts correctly. Today, hermeneutic method is practised across the human sciences and applied to the study of all types of written texts, actions, and other meaningful material. The chapter then focuses on the relationship between hermeneutics and human sciences. It also examines hermeneutics as a methodological approach used in legal research and the practice of law. There are two broad notions of legal interpretation. According to the first — the prevailing and most traditional notion — the interpretation of the sources of law is knowledge-based; the interpreter’s task is to extract the pre-existing meaning of a legal text, as set out by its author. According to the second notion of legal interpretation, the activity involves the interpreter’s will. The interpreter’s task is to attribute meaning to a text, by choosing from several possible meanings.

scholarly journals Reasonableness of Limits, Reasonableness as Limit (in Legal Interpretation)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Manzin
Keyword(s):  
Common Core ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
The One ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Core Meaning ◽  
Moral Limits

AbstractThis short essay aims at discussing the opposition between two different views on limits in legal interpretations: I will call them (i) “no-limits option” and (ii) “pro-limits option”. As for (i), it is based on a widely diffused understanding of individual freedom: that of an unceasing breaking of all limits. This idea involves nowadays not only a number of once accepted moral limits, nor the material or social limits suffered by people, but also the limits of conceptual determinations. As for (ii), it is based on the conjecture that limit would be the condition of “no longer, not yet”—as such, a matter of authentic freedom. The “no-limits option” can easily lead, in legal interpretation, to a radical contextualism according to which there would be unlimited meanings for a syntactically and semantically same legal text. The “pro-limits option”, on the contrary, maintains that the existence of limits is reasonable, and that reasonableness is itself a limit to interpretation. In other words, the undetermined space of “no longer, not yet” in which the limits consist of is open to exploration on and beyond through appropriate procedures of reason-giving. According to the “pro-limits option”, a reasonably common core-meaning of a legal text should be sought also when cases of application vary—and that would be precisely the nature of legal interpretation. Arguments in favor of this thesis can be found in Western philosophy from Aristotle to contemporary neurosciences (according to which reasonableness is natural). A remarkable consequence of my discussion on these two options deals with the concept of normativity, given that option (i) conceives normativity only as an expression of will (the one to establish and to infringe limits), whereas option (ii) links normativity to reasonableness.

scholarly journals Legal procedure of official interpretation of legal texts

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-204
Author(s):  
K. V. Nykolyna
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Normative Rule

The scientific article is devoted to the substantiation of the procedural nature of the official interpretation of legal texts. The author emphasizes that it is on the official interpretation that legally significant decisions are based, which establish the specific rights and obligations of the subjects. However, today there are no systematized methodological recommendations, requirements, officially established legal procedure and principles of interpretive activity, which could determine common standards of official interpretation. The procedure of interpretation consists in the sequence of actions of the authorized subjects within separate stages.The article formulates the author’s definition of legal interpretation procedure as a system of successive legally significant actions of authorized entities, which are aimed at clarifying, constructing and explaining to other legal entities the meaning and scope of legal norms formulated in legal texts. Taking into account the latest methodological approaches to interpretation and the requirements of the rule of law,the author reveals the content of legal interpretation, which consists of separate stages, which in turn include a number of successive procedures. In particular, the stage of clarifying the content of the legal text involves the following procedures: initial study of the legal text and the form of its consolidation in the provisions of the legal act, comprehensive analysis of the legal text, analysis of the received interpretation in terms of justice, human rights, rule of law, design normative rule. The explanation, according to the author, includes the following procedures: preparation of a draft interpretative act, namely a legal document that contains an explanation of the content and application of the legal norm, formulated by the authorized body within its competence; adoption of a legal interpretation act, making it universally binding for all those who apply the clarified rules of law; promulgation of an interpretative act, namely, bringing its content to the attention of society or law enforcement agencies; control over the use of the act of interpretation of the law by the subjects of its application; generalization of legal interpretative acts in order to systematize them. Given the importance of official interpretation of legal texts, the feasibility of determining at least the general principles of legal interpretation at the regulatory level is considered. Keywords: interpretation of law, official interpretation, legal procedure, legal interpretation activity.

scholarly journals O grze interpretatora z tekstem prawnym i czynnikami pozatekstowymi w derywacyjnej koncepcji wykładni prawa

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-65
Author(s):  
Paweł Jabłoński ◽  
Przemysław Kaczmarek
Keyword(s):  
Legal Culture ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Derivative Concept

The aim of this paper is to show the derivative concept of legal interpretation from the point of view of the structure of limits of the juridical power. This structure includes the politico-legal culture, the legal text, the juridical culture, and personal factors, such as ethical and aesthetic judgements. These days, the derivative concept is the most influential Polish theory of legal interpretation. According to this concept the process of interpreting the law is a kind of a game between the legal text and extratextual factors, which are treated as extratextual limits of juridical power. On the one hand, the legal text does not determine the full meaning of the law, although it has great importance for it. On the other hand, the derivative concept precisely identifies certain others factors that are relevant for the content of law.

scholarly journals Aktualność operatywnego modelu wykładni prawa w obliczu postmodernizmu

Prawo ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 320 ◽  
pp. 165-176
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Szymańska
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Face ◽  
Postmodern Philosophy ◽  
The Law

The validity of the operative model of legal interpretation in the face of postmodernismDue to postmodernist philosophy is becoming summary increasingly popular this article concerns the validity of a legal interpretation model commonly used in modern times with regard to the postmodernist point of view. Although this problem is widely described in Western literature, in Poland, on the contrary, it is gaining popularity only among philosophers of law. The aim of the article is to present the critical approach of postmodernist philosophy to existing order and demonstrate its attitude towards interpretation of the law. It should be noted that postmodernism has no ambition of constructing its own model of legal interpretation, but comments on and reviews all that has been said on this issue in the legal theory and philosophy of law. This is due to the fact that postmodernism is hostile to all methodologies, modelling theories and theoretical constructions. On the other hand, based on the general assumptions of postmodern philosophy, a postmodern view on the interpretation of the law can be derived. The article discusses deconstructionism, hermeneutics and intertextuality as methods of creating the meaning of a legal text during interpretation, acceptable by postmodernism. The study also presents criticism of the assumption of rational legislator proposed by legal positivism. In this respect postmodernism makes a real revolution in the field of law enforcement, prioritizing the interpreter instead of the legislator, and the creation of a legal text meaning during the process of legal interpretation in place of meaning determination.

Romans 8: Dead to the Law, Alive in the Spirit

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Lohse
Keyword(s):  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Interpretive Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Interpretive Strategies ◽  
Civil Death ◽  
Romans 8

This essay comments on the nature of the language of the law and legal interpretation by exam- ining their effects on their recipients. Two forms of philosophy of law are examined, legal positiv- ism and teleological interpretive theory, which are then applied to their specific manifestations in literature and case law, both relating to antebellum slave law. In these cases, the slave sustains civil death under the law, permissible by means of these legal interpretive strategies.

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