The Nature Of Legal Interpretation

Download or read book The Nature of Legal Interpretation written by Brian G. Slocum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Judging Under Uncertainty written by Adrian Vermeule and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Adrian Vermeule shows that any approach to legal interpretation rests on institutional and empirical premises about the capacities of judges and the systemic effects of their rulings. He argues that legal interpretation is above all an exercise in decisionmaking under severe empirical uncertainty.

Download or read book Purposive Interpretation in Law written by Aharon Barak and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-16 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Ordinary Meaning written by Brian G. Slocum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brian G. Slocum s "Ordinary Meaning "offers an extended legal-linguistic analysis of the eponymous interpretive doctrine. A centuries-old consensus exists among courts and legal scholars that words in legal texts should be interpreted in light of accepted standards of communication. Therefore the questions of what makes some meaning the ordinary one, and how the determinants of ordinary meaning are identified and conceptualized, are of crucial importance to the interpretation of legal texts. Arguing against reliance on acontextual dictionary definitions, "Ordinary Meaning" rigorously explores the contributions that specific context makes to meaning, along with linguistic phenomena such as indexicals and quantifiers. Slocum provides a theory and a robust general framework for how the determinants of ordinary meaning should be identified and developed."

Download or read book Between Authority and Interpretation written by Joseph Raz and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Joseph Raz develops his views on some of the central questions in practical philosophy: legal, political, and moral. The book provides an overview of Raz's work on jurisprudence and the nature of law in the context of broader questions in the philosophy of practical reason. The book opens with a discussion of methodological issues, focusing on understanding the nature of jurisprudence. It asks how the nature of law can be explained, and how the success of a legal theory can be established. The book then addresses central questions on the nature of law, its relation to morality, the nature and justification of authority, and the nature of legal reasoning. It explains how legitimate law, while being a branch of applied morality, is also a relatively autonomous system, which has the potential to bridge moral differences among its subjects. Raz offers responses to some critical reactions to his theory of authority, adumbrating, and modifying the theory to meet some of them. The final part of the book brings together for the first time Raz's work on the nature of interpretation in law and the humanities. It includes a new essay explaining interpretive pluralism and the possibility of interpretive innovation. Taken together, the essays in the volume offer a valuable introduction for students coming for the first time to Raz's work in the philosophy of law, and an original contribution to many of the current debates in practical philosophy.

Download or read book Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning written by Anne Wagner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Judging Statutes written by Robert A. Katzmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an ideal world, the laws of Congress--known as federal statutes--would always be clearly worded and easily understood by the judges tasked with interpreting them. But many laws feature ambiguous or even contradictory wording. How, then, should judges divine their meaning? Should they stick only to the text? To what degree, if any, should they consult aids beyond the statutes themselves? Are the purposes of lawmakers in writing law relevant? Some judges, such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, believe courts should look to the language of the statute and virtually nothing else. Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit respectfully disagrees. In Judging Statutes, Katzmann, who is a trained political scientist as well as a judge, argues that our constitutional system charges Congress with enacting laws; therefore, how Congress makes its purposes known through both the laws themselves and reliable accompanying materials should be respected. He looks at how the American government works, including how laws come to be and how various agencies construe legislation. He then explains the judicial process of interpreting and applying these laws through the demonstration of two interpretative approaches, purposivism (focusing on the purpose of a law) and textualism (focusing solely on the text of the written law). Katzmann draws from his experience to show how this process plays out in the real world, and concludes with some suggestions to promote understanding between the courts and Congress. When courts interpret the laws of Congress, they should be mindful of how Congress actually functions, how lawmakers signal the meaning of statutes, and what those legislators expect of courts construing their laws. The legislative record behind a law is in truth part of its foundation, and therefore merits consideration.