Interpretivism and the Limits of Law (Elgar Studies in Legal Theory)

What does it mean to understand the law? This challenging book discusses whether and how understanding the law is qualitatively different from understanding a different, non-legal text or linguistic utterance, and whether knowledge of a language is sufficient to understand legal content in that language. Providing a comprehensive overview of current studies of interpretivism, both in the common and civil law systems, this book applies state of the art theories and tools of modern philosophy of language to shed new light on traditional questions in legal theory. Chapters discuss the normative importance and descriptive impact of moral inferences in legal interpretation and critically analyse the claims of legal interpretivism, uncovering the most recent versions of legal positivism. The impressive selection of leading contributors explore an array of important topics including metaethics, expressivism and legal semantics. Outlining a new direction of study and delineating the path for future research on moral inferences in legal interpretation, this timely book will be a thought-provoking read for legal scholars and students interested in legal theory, philosophy and interpretation. Front Matter Copyright Contents Contributors 1. Introduction to Interpretivism and the Limits of Law PART I Legal reasoning through the lens of interpretivism 2. Practical reasoning and the communicative model of law 3. Legal antipositivism and the reliability challenge in metaethics 4. The meaning and interpretation of statutes in Anglo-American legal systems 5. The communication theory as a phantom PART II Interpretivism versus the communicative model of legal reasoning 6. Why the anti-positivists’ concept of practice is too thin 7. Legal interpretivism: all or some? 8. Interpretation and the bounds of reason PART III Legal interpretation and legal meaning 9. The authoritative intention thesis 10. Distinguishing the distinguishable: interpretative norms and interpretative criteria in adjudication of meaning 11. From rule-scepticism to the interpretive orthodoxy? On Wittgenstein, legal theory, and the difference between understanding and interpreting a rule PART IV The semantics and meta-semantics of legal content 12. Semantic theories and interpretation: a critique of Michael S Green’s ‘Dworkin’s Fallacy’ 13. When expressiveness flows back: the symbolic functions of legislation and their legal significance 14. Expressivism and the ex aequo et bono adjudication method 15. Semantics of institutional names Index