The Problem of Normative Authority in Legal Interpretation

Abstract

A number of commentators in American legal circles have recently recognized that law is interpretation. The growing recognition that law is interpretation has brought with it a certain uneasiness. That uneasiness can be traced to the fear that once the “plain meaning” view of language has been deconstructed there can be no end to the process of interpretation and worse yet no determinable standards or principles to judge competing interpretations. Return to the “plain meaning” view of language as the solution to the anxiety over interpretation without constraint has been blocked by Wittgenstein’s insightful critique of the absolute determinancy of Sinn and Bedeutung. In his later writings Wittgenstein demonstrated that his own earlier attempt in the Tractatus to protect against the errancy of language through the identification of the form of the word with the form of the entity fails. Meaning is not just there like a dead object which is present for us to grasp; meaning only comes to life within a “form of life”.