Hermeneutics of Law

This edited volume covers the debates, discussions and controversies surrounding the foundations of legal hermeneutics, the question of methods and legal techniques of interpretation, and the conditions for a fair legal interpretation. Primary questions addressed in this work include:

• Are there legal methods of interpretation more appropriate than others?


• Can we do without any method of interpretation and leave complete freedom in the assessment of legal texts to the Judge?


• Is legal interpretation solely an act of will of the Judge?

The substantial contributions are written by philosophers and jurists working in the history of legal hermeneutics: the Ancients (Juridico-Talmunic law, Roman law), the Middle-Ages (Roman-Canonical law), the Modern (Schleiermacher, Savigny, Ecole de l'Exégèse) and the contemporary era (Betti, Gadamer, Dworkin, Ricoeur, Fisch). The book is aimed at students and researchers working in philosophy and legal theory.

Talmudic law: a law of borderline cases. - Hermeneutics of Roman Law: A Modern Perspective. - Ancient sources, medieval interpretations:The role of legal texts in shaping medieval jurisprudence (12th-15th centuries). - The theory of interpretation in the
Treatise on Roman Law
by Friedrich Carl von Savigny. - Law as regional hermeneutics and as special hermeneutics. - Gadamer s Law
Recht. -
Betti between Gadamer and Kelsen: From Interpretation as a Methodology to the Limit of Methodologism in Juridical Interpretation. -The magical Triangle of Interpretation: Meaning, Concretisation, Motivating Opinion. - Legal Hermeneutics: The Window of the Text as Transparent, Opaque, or Translucent. - Postmodern Legal Hermeneutics: Ontology, Practice, Critique.