Toward An Informal Account Of Legal Interpretation

Toward An Informal Account Of Legal Interpretation Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Toward An Informal Account Of Legal Interpretation book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

Toward an Informal Account of Legal Interpretation

Author : Allan C. Hutchinson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2016-10-20
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781107152328

Get Book

Toward an Informal Account of Legal Interpretation by Allan C. Hutchinson Pdf

The book challenges all formalist accounts of legal interpretation and offers an 'informal' alternative.

Legal Interpretation: Perspectives from Other Disciplines and Private Texts

Author : Kent Greenawalt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2010-10-27
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780199842438

Get Book

Legal Interpretation: Perspectives from Other Disciplines and Private Texts by Kent Greenawalt Pdf

In Legal Interpretation, Kent Greenawalt focuses on the complex and multi-faceted topic of textual interpretation of the law. All law needs to be interpreted, and there are many ways to do it. But what sorts of questions must one seek to answer in interpreting law and what approach should one take in each case? Whose interpretations should be prioritized? Why would one be drawn to one strategy over another? And should legal interpretation seek to satisfy specific aims or general objectives? In order to provide the answers to these questions, Greenawalt explores the ways in which interpretive strategies from other disciplines--the philosophy of language, literary and musical interpretation, religious interpretation, and general interpretive theory--can augment and enrich methods of legal interpretation. Over the course of the book, he suggests how such forms of interpretation are analogous to legal interpretation--and points to those cases in which interpretation must rest on the distinctive aspects of legal theory, such as is the case with private documents. Furthermore, Greenawalts meditation suggests that interpretive strategies from other disciplines can shed light on the essential nature of legal interpretation and provide roads by which to account for dissonance between various methods of interpretation. Legal Interpretation is a thought-provoking reflection on the ways that insights from a range of intellectual traditions can deepen our understanding of law, particularly with regard to constitutional law.

Law and Legal Interpretation

Author : Fernando Atria Lemaitre,Neil MacCormick
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 837 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2017-11-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351770101

Get Book

Law and Legal Interpretation by Fernando Atria Lemaitre,Neil MacCormick Pdf

This title was first published in 2003. Leading contemporary essays on interpretation are assembled in this volume, which offsets them against a small number of "classical" works from earlier periods. It has long been recognized that textual sources (constitutions, statutes, precedents, commentaries) are central to developed systems of law and that interpretation of such texts is one highly important element in adjudication, legal practice and legal scholarship. Scholars have also contended that the totality of legal activity is "interpretive" in a wider sense and debates about objectivity have raged. The reasons for this development are here critically scrutinized.

Universals of Legal Reasoning by Judges

Author : Thomas Lundmark
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2024-05-07
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780198785675

Get Book

Universals of Legal Reasoning by Judges by Thomas Lundmark Pdf

How do judges influence the development of law in Germany and should their behaviour set a precedent for others to follow? This book explores whether or not German judicial methods should serve as a model for the development of European law, both by the European courts and by the courts of other European member states.

Modern Legal Interpretation

Author : Marko Novak,Vojko Strahovnik
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2019-01-24
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781527527041

Get Book

Modern Legal Interpretation by Marko Novak,Vojko Strahovnik Pdf

Legalism or legal formalism usually depicts judges as resolving cases by allegedly merely applying pre-existing legal rules. They do not seem to legislate, exercise discretion, balance or pursue policies, and they definitely do not look outside of conventional legal texts for guidance in deciding new cases. For them, the law is an autonomous domain of knowledge and technique. What they follow are the maxims of clarity, determinacy, and coherence of law. This perception of law and adjudication is sometimes designated as “an orthodox lawyering”. However, at least in certain cases, it is very difficult to say that legalism is not an inappropriate theory or a method of legal interpretation. Different theories have attested that legal interpretation is much more than just legalism, which appears to be far too naïve. In the framework of modern legal interpretation, the following questions can be raised. Is it possible to integrate legalism in a coherent theory of legal interpretation? Is legalism as a distinctive theory of legal interpretation still a feasible theory of interpretation? How can such a formalist approach withstand a critique from Dworkinian moral interpretivism or accusations of being a myth, masking political preferences from legal realists? These and many other issues about legal interpretation are discussed in this book by prominent legal philosophers and legal theorists.

Realms of Legal Interpretation

Author : Kent Greenawalt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2018-07-06
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780190882877

Get Book

Realms of Legal Interpretation by Kent Greenawalt Pdf

Legal norms may forbid, require, or authorize a particular form of behavior. The law of contracts, for example, informs people how to enter into agreements that will bind both sides, and from this we establish legal requirements on how they should behave. In public law, legal standards provide authority to legislators and executive officials to set standards for citizens, and also give judges the authority to decide disputes by applying and interpreting governing standards. In Realms of Legal Interpretation, Kent Greenawalt focuses on how courts decide what is legally forbidden or authorized, and how context shapes their decisions. The problem, he argues, is that we do not, and never have, agreed exist on all the details of the standards United States judges should employ--like everyone else, judges have different ideas of what constitutes good common sense. Moreover, circumstance regularly throws up hurdles. For instance, what should a judge do if the text of a statute does not fit the intention of the legislators, or if someone has obviously and mistakenly omitted a necessary item from a will or contract? Different judges react in different ways. Acknowledging that courts will never agree upon a uniform approach to applying norms and interpreting the law, Greenawalt's aim is to provide a capacious, user-friendly model for approaching hard cases sensibly in both public and private law. Just as importantly, the book serves as a pithy guide to the major forms of legal interpretation for nonlawyers. Ultimately, Realms of Legal Interpretation represents a pithy distillation of Greenawalt's many works on the theories that anchor legal interpretation in America's legal system.

Purposive Interpretation in Law

Author : Aharon Barak
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-16
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781400841264

Get Book

Purposive Interpretation in Law by Aharon Barak Pdf

This book presents a comprehensive theory of legal interpretation, by a leading judge and legal theorist. Currently, legal philosophers and jurists apply different theories of interpretation to constitutions, statutes, rules, wills, and contracts. Aharon Barak argues that an alternative approach--purposive interpretation--allows jurists and scholars to approach all legal texts in a similar manner while remaining sensitive to the important differences. Moreover, regardless of whether purposive interpretation amounts to a unifying theory, it would still be superior to other methods of interpretation in tackling each kind of text separately. Barak explains purposive interpretation as follows: All legal interpretation must start by establishing a range of semantic meanings for a given text, from which the legal meaning is then drawn. In purposive interpretation, the text's "purpose" is the criterion for establishing which of the semantic meanings yields the legal meaning. Establishing the ultimate purpose--and thus the legal meaning--depends on the relationship between the subjective and objective purposes; that is, between the original intent of the text's author and the intent of a reasonable author and of the legal system at the time of interpretation. This is easy to establish when the subjective and objective purposes coincide. But when they don't, the relative weight given to each purpose depends on the nature of the text. For example, subjective purpose is given substantial weight in interpreting a will; objective purpose, in interpreting a constitution. Barak develops this theory with masterful scholarship and close attention to its practical application. Throughout, he contrasts his approach with that of textualists and neotextualists such as Antonin Scalia, pragmatists such as Richard Posner, and legal philosophers such as Ronald Dworkin. This book represents a profoundly important contribution to legal scholarship and a major alternative to interpretive approaches advanced by other leading figures in the judicial world.

Leading Works in Legal Ethics

Author : Julian Webb
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2023-08-11
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781000923957

Get Book

Leading Works in Legal Ethics by Julian Webb Pdf

This volume reviews and takes stock of legal ethics, at a time when the legal profession globally is experiencing considerable change and challenges, through a re-evaluation of writings that are in some way foundational to the field. Legal ethics, understood here as the study of the ethics and professional regulation of lawyers, has emerged as a novel and important field of study over the last 50 years. It is also one that displays considerable diversity in its scholarship, with distinctive philosophical and interdisciplinary approaches emerging over the years to underpin and supplement the doctrinal ‘law on lawyering’. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars from the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this collection offers not just critical insights into the authors’ chosen texts, but a thought-provoking commentary on the current state of legal ethics scholarship and its future directions. In addition to being an essential resource for scholars and students of legal ethics theory, it will also be of interest to academics and researchers in legal theory, the philosophy of law, and applied ethics.

Democracy and Constitutions

Author : Allan C. Hutchinson
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2021-06-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781487537234

Get Book

Democracy and Constitutions by Allan C. Hutchinson Pdf

As things stand, a commitment to weak democracy and strong constitutionalism ensures that a range of elite groups, actors, and institutions – political, economic, intellectual, and legal – hold considerable sway over constitutional matters, leaving less room for the participation of ordinary people. With the continued primacy of liberal constitutionalism, constitutional law has come to represent and facilitate the centrality of judicial power and authority. In Democracy and Constitutions, Allan C. Hutchinson warns against this deference to a legal elite on questions of constitutional meaning. For Hutchinson, an over-reliance on constitutional law, and a lack of attention to democratic politics, keeps people from influencing the moral and political character of society; it saps civic energies and relegates ordinary people to the sidelines. Engaging and provocative, Democracy and Constitutions charts a course away from the elitism of the present and toward a more democratic future, one that re-balances society’s commitment to both democracy and constitutions. Advocating for a strong democracy and weak constitutionalism, this book places ordinary people at the institutional heart of government and politics, arguing that such a re-calibration is better for democracy and for society.

The Nature of Legal Interpretation

Author : Brian G. Slocum
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2017-05-17
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780226445168

Get Book

The Nature of Legal Interpretation by Brian G. Slocum Pdf

Language shapes and reflects how we think about the world. It engages and intrigues us. Our everyday use of language is quite effortless—we are all experts on our native tongues. Despite this, issues of language and meaning have long flummoxed the judges on whom we depend for the interpretation of our most fundamental legal texts. Should a judge feel confident in defining common words in the texts without the aid of a linguist? How is the meaning communicated by the text determined? Should the communicative meaning of texts be decisive, or at least influential? To fully engage and probe these questions of interpretation, this volume draws upon a variety of experts from several fields, who collectively examine the interpretation of legal texts. In The Nature of Legal Interpretation, the contributors argue that the meaning of language is crucial to the interpretation of legal texts, such as statutes, constitutions, and contracts. Accordingly, expert analysis of language from linguists, philosophers, and legal scholars should influence how courts interpret legal texts. Offering insightful new interdisciplinary perspectives on originalism and legal interpretation, these essays put forth a significant and provocative discussion of how best to characterize the nature of language in legal texts.

Law, Life, and Lore

Author : Allan C. Hutchinson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2017-10-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781108421058

Get Book

Law, Life, and Lore by Allan C. Hutchinson Pdf

Combining autobiography and scholarship, this volume asks how lawyers and legal theorists' experiences affect their legal practice and research.

The Pragmatic Turn in Law

Author : Janet Giltrow,Dieter Stein
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2017-06-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781501504723

Get Book

The Pragmatic Turn in Law by Janet Giltrow,Dieter Stein Pdf

In legal interpretation, where does meaning come from? Law is made from language, yet law, unlike other language-related disciplines, has not so far experienced its "pragmatic turn" towards inference and the construction of meaning. This book investigates to what extent a pragmatically based view of l linguistic and legal interpretation can lead to new theoretical views for law and, in addition, to practical consequences in legal decision-making. With its traditional emphasis on the letter of the law and the immutable stability of a text as legal foundation, law has been slow to take the pragmatic perspective: namely, the language-user 's experience and activity in making meaning. More accustomed to literal than to pragmatic notions of meaning, that is, in the text rather than constructed by speakers and hearers the disciplines of law may be culturally resistant to the pragmatic turn. By bringing together the different but complementary perspectives of pragmaticians and lawyers, this book addresses the issue of to what extent legal meaning can be productively analysed as deriving from resources beyond the text, beyond the letter of the law. This collection re-visits the feasibility of the notion of literal meaning for legal interpretation and, at the same time, the feasibility of pragmatic meaning for law. Can explications of pragmatic meaning support court actions in the same way concepts of literal meaning have traditionally supported statutory interpretations and court judgements? What are the consequences of a user-based view of language for the law, in both its practices of interpretation and its definition of itself as a field? Readers will find in this collection means of approaching such questions, and promising routes for inquiry into the genre- and field-specific characteristics of inference in law. In many respects, the problem of literal vs. pragmatic meaning confined to the text vs. reaching beyond it will appear to parallel the dichotomy in law between textualism and intentionalism. There are indeed illuminating connections between the pair of linguistic terms and the more publicly controversial legal ones. But the parallel is not exact, and the linguistic dichotomy is in any case anterior to the legal one. Even as linguistic-pragmatic investigation may serve legal domains, the legal questions themselves point back to central conditions of all linguistic meaning.

Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning

Author : Anne Wagner,Wouter Werner,Deborah Cao
Publisher : Springer
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2006-11-23
Category : Law
ISBN : 1402053193

Get Book

Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning by Anne Wagner,Wouter Werner,Deborah Cao Pdf

The study of legal semiotics emphasizes the contingency and fluidity of legal concepts and stresses the existence of overlapping, competing and coexisting legal discourses. New problems, changing power structures and societal norms and new faces of injustice – all these force reconsideration, reformulation and even replacement of established doctrines. This book focuses on the application of law in a wide variety of contexts, including international politics and diplomatic practice.

Hart, Fuller, and Everything After

Author : Allan C Hutchinson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2023-02-23
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781509965229

Get Book

Hart, Fuller, and Everything After by Allan C Hutchinson Pdf

More has been said about the Hart-Fuller debate than can be considered healthy or productive even within the precious world of jurisprudential scholarship – too much philosophising about how law has revelled in its own abstractness and narrowness. But the mission of this book is distinctly and determinedly different – it is not to rework these already-rehashed ideas, but to reject them entirely. Rather than add to the massive jurisprudential literature that has been generated by all and sundry, the book criticises and abandons the project that Hart and Fuller set in motion. It contends that the turn that was taken in 1957 has led down a series of cul-de-sacs, blind alleys, and dead-ends to nowhere useful or illuminating. It is more than past time to leave their debate behind and strike out in an entirely new and more promising direction. The book insists that not only law, but also all theorising about law, is political in all its derivations, dimensions, and directions.

Legal Interpretation in Democratic States

Author : Tom D. Campbell
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2017-12-15
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1138725862

Get Book

Legal Interpretation in Democratic States by Tom D. Campbell Pdf

This title was first published in 2002: The judicial interpretation of statutes and constitutions is the controversial focus of much contemporary legal philosophy and practice. It is crucial for the distribution of power as between legislatures and judiciaries in democratic polities. The original essays in this volume relate to the prospects of finding a workable separation of powers which utilizes the rule of positive law to curb political power without undermining the right to self-determination which is central to the democratic ideal. Written by a group of distinguished American and Australian legal and political philosophers, the essays are divided into three parts: those sharing a particular concern with the proper role of law-makers� intentions in legal interpretation; those applying or discussing particular approaches to interpretation: historical, comparative, hermeneutic, deconstructionist, and natural law; and those discussing originalism, individual rights, implications, and federalism in constitutional interpretation.