A constructivist conception of legal interpretation (original) (raw)
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2016
Ronald Dworkin sostiene que el contenido del derecho se limita al conjunto de derechos sujetos a ser adjudicados ante los tribunales. Para Dworkin, el valor de la "legalidad", es decir, el valor que sirve el derecho de manera distintiva cuando funciona adecuadamente, es una virtud de las decisiones judiciales. El objetivo de este artículo es criticar el enfoque hacia las cortes de Dworkin, dado que proporciona una concepción empobrecida de lo que es el valor de la "legalidad", argumentaré que la legalidad tiene una dimensión tanto sistemática como adjudicativa. En su dimensión sistemática, exige que el gobierno en su conjunto esté estructurado de tal forma que garantice el ejercicio adecuado del poder público. Por lo tanto, para que un sistema jurídico presente el valor de la legalidad, no es suficiente que los jueces emprendan el uso de la coerción del Estado bajo ciertas condiciones. Además, el ejercicio del poder público tiene que ser acorde con un esquema de separación de poderes con un objetivo de justicia. Así entendidas, no todas las exigencias de la legalidad son sujetas a ser adjudicadas judicialmente. Esta * Artículo recibido el 16 de octubre de 2014 y aceptado para su publicación el 6 de noviembre de 2014. ** Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Reading. dimitris.kyritsis@ gmail.com. I thank participants in the Workshop on the Legal Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin organized by UNAM and the Supreme Court of Mexico for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to an audience at the 2014 McMaster Conference in Legal Philosophy, where I also presented the argument of this article, and especially to Eric Encarnacion for his written and oral comments. This article elaborates claims that I make in my monograph Shared Authority: Courts and Legislatures in Legal Theory (forthcoming Hart Publishing).
2012
The debates about the interrelations between reason and law have undergone a change after the eighteenth century. References to the recta ratio of jusnaturalistic tradition have not disappeared, but other comprehensions of legal reason have developed. The European debate over legal positivist science has contributed to this in a manifestation of the rationality of law. This transformation may be considered the basis for the development of true “legal technologies” throughout the twentieth century. On the other hand, in the context of theories of positive law which have taken the relation between ethics and legal reason as a problem, the formation of discourses on coercion (Austin and Holmes), on validity (Kelsen and Hart) and on justification (Alexy and Dworkin) has also contributed to the emergence of new models of legal rationality. In this paper, it is highlighted that the construction of these models is linked to the “points of view” which theories have proposed as legitimate fo...
A New Interpretivist Conception of the Rule of Law
Problema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho
Ronald Dworkin sostiene que el contenido del derecho se limita al conjunto de derechos sujetos a ser adjudicados ante los tribunales. Para Dworkin, el valor de la "legalidad", es decir, el valor que sirve el derecho de manera distintiva cuando funciona adecuadamente, es una virtud de las decisiones judiciales. El objetivo de este artículo es criticar el enfoque hacia las cortes de Dworkin, dado que proporciona una concepción empobrecida de lo que es el valor de la "legalidad", argumentaré que la legalidad tiene una dimensión tanto sistemática como adjudicativa. En su dimensión sistemática, exige que el gobierno en su conjunto esté estructurado de tal forma que garantice el ejercicio adecuado del poder público. Por lo tanto, para que un sistema jurídico presente el valor de la legalidad, no es suficiente que los jueces emprendan el uso de la coerción del Estado bajo ciertas condiciones. Además, el ejercicio del poder público tiene que ser acorde con un esquema de separación de poderes con un objetivo de justicia. Así entendidas, no todas las exigencias de la legalidad son sujetas a ser adjudicadas judicialmente. Esta * Artículo recibido el 16 de octubre de 2014 y aceptado para su publicación el 6 de noviembre de 2014. ** Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Reading. dimitris.kyritsis@ gmail.com. I thank participants in the Workshop on the Legal Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin organized by UNAM and the Supreme Court of Mexico for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to an audience at the 2014 McMaster Conference in Legal Philosophy, where I also presented the argument of this article, and especially to Eric Encarnacion for his written and oral comments. This article elaborates claims that I make in my monograph Shared Authority: Courts and Legislatures in Legal Theory (forthcoming Hart Publishing).
An almost pure theory of legal interpretation within Legal Science
Legal interpretation and Scientific Knowledge
The present paper started as a commentary on Giorgio Pino’s article presented in the II Lisbon Meeting on Legal Theory on Legal Interpretation and Scientific Knowledge, but soon gained independence. Nevertheless, in addition to the issues mentioned, the two main ideas he presents — that legal interpretation is not a scientific operation and that legal knowledge cannot be considered a kind of science, and, consequently, “politics” is a much more appropriate notion to resort to — are also addressed. For this endeavour, firstly, I lay out a conceptual framework of law and legal science — a soft normativist model — which will allow me to explain my options regarding the subject of legal interpretation and therefore avoid a “dialogue of the deaf”. Secondly, I outline the basis of my general theory of legal interpretation, in which I will address questions such as: what do we mean by legal interpretation? What is its object and is law hopelessly indeterminate? Who are the subjects of interpretation? If there are different interpretative moments, and how do we interpret? This last aspect is decisive because, unlike what is usually argued, interpretation is a norm-guided activity by natural language and interpretative norms. Thirdly, I try to answer the question regarding the scientificity of legal knowledge, addressing questions such as the possibility of obtaining legal knowledge — is there any determination and objectivity? — and the importance of the distinction between clear and hard cases. I finish by arguing that there is no doubt that interpretation can be to some extent a scientific activity.
A New Interpretivist Conception of the Rule of Law' Problema 10 (2016) 91-109
Ronald Dworkin argues that the content of the law is limited to the set of judicially enforceable rights. For him, legality, the value that law distinctively serves when it goes well, is primarily a virtue of judicial decision-making. The purpose of this article is to criticize Dworkin’s court-centrism on the ground that it delivers an impoverished conception of legality. Legality has a systemic as well as an adjudicative dimension. In its systemic dimension it requires that government as a whole is structured in a way that guarantees the proper exercise of public power. Accordingly, for a legal system to exhibit the value of legality, it is not sufficient that its judges direct the use of state coercion under certain conditions. Additionally the exercise of public power must accord with a scheme of separation of powers that is geared towards justice. Not all the requirements of legality thus understood are judicially enforceable. This expansive conception of legality is underpinned by a theory of political legitimacy that differs from Dworkin’s. Legitimacy is not merely a retail thing. A political community is also legitimate when it has standing guarantees for the proper exercise of power. Separation of powers is crucial among them. http://biblio.juridicas.unam.mx/Revista/FilosofiaDerecho/
Acta Juridica Hungarica
The article is the second part of an analysis that seeks to clarify the distinctive normativity of law, as it is refl ected in the legal systems of constitutional democracies. It explores the ability of interpretive theories to capture the conceptual characteristics of the normativity of law. The article argues that it is its institutional character that makes the normativity of law distinctive. The normativity of law must be construed as a form of institutional normativity. The analysis of the institutional character of legal norms revolves around the idea of obligations. It implies that the distinctive normativity of law builds on normative guidance by authoritative institutions. The ability of the law to provide normative guidance is explained in terms of three types of reasons: moral reasons, compliance reasons and response reasons. An implication of this insight is that moral legitimacy is constitutive of the normativity of law. The article concludes with an exploration of the dimensions of moral legitimacy in law, and the way the interplay of the justifi catory background to normative claims and the institutional features of law make false normativity in law possible.
Philosophical and Legal Foundation of the Study of Legal Interpretation Technique
WISDOM
The article deals with the philosophical and legal foundations of legal interpretation technique. In particular it is pointed out that in spite of the fact that the legal interpretation is an integral procedure realized within the framework of law implementation (especially - law enforcement), at the same time it has its own meaning and due to this fact deserves a separate scientific attention. Legal interpretation is aimed not simply at clarification of the meaning of normative or other prescriptions, but at finding out the actual will of the legislator. It is pointed out that, contrary to the “classical” postulates of legal interpretation, the source material for interpretation is not only the texts of normative legal acts. It is clear that in the countries of the Anglo-Saxon legal family interpretation is aimed at clarification of general principles, legal trends, which are reflected in the judicial precedents on similar cases. However, in the countries of the Romano-Germanic leg...
Courts, Interpretation, the Rule of Law, 2014
This paper is a reevaluation of the position of the Italian jurist Emilio Betti in the tradition of the hermeneutical philosophy of law. I argue that Betti should be considered to be a part of that tradition by analysing the elements of a hermeneutical theory of law in his theory of legal interpretation and general theory of interpretation. Furthermore, I challenge the claims by Antonin Scalia in Reading Law about the novelty and originalist provenience of the canons of interpretation/construction by elaborating Betties view on basic canons of interpretation in general.