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Legal Interpretation and Scientific Knowledge pp 29–45Cite as

The Politics of Legal Interpretation

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Abstract

Is legal interpretation a kind of scientific enterprise? Can there be such a thing as a ‘scientific interpretation’ in the law? And why do such questions matter? Are they even worth asking? My aim in this essay is to look into questions of this sort, in order to show, ultimately, that legal interpretation belongs less to the realm of science than to the realm of politics: legal interpretation, I will argue, is an intensely evaluative and decisional activity rather than a descriptive, objective and value-neutral one (as science is normally supposed to be). And, as a consequence, defining legal interpretation, or at least some of its varieties, in terms of a scientific activity carries the risk of distorting some central features—indeed the very ‘essence’—of the practice known as ‘legal interpretation’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In continental Europe, ‘legal scholarship’ is sometimes also called ‘legal doctrine’ or ‘legal dogmatics’. See Bulygin (2015), Peczenik (2005), and Aarnio (2011).

  2. 2.

    For some rather isolated exceptions, see Harris (1979); Samuel (2003: esp. chs 1 and 2). Interestingly, when the American comparative lawyer John Henry Merryman had to use ‘legal science’ in an essay on Italian legal scholarship, he felt the need to explain why he was using such a phrase. See Merryman (1965, p. 45 ff).

  3. 3.

    Lyons (1999, pp. 301–303).

  4. 4.

    Ferrajoli (1989, ch 1); Redondo (2009, esp. 33–34).

  5. 5.

    See Raz (2009, p. 299): ‘some interpretations are so bad as to be interpretations no longer’.

  6. 6.

    On thick concepts, see Williams (1985, pp. 129–131, 140–145).

  7. 7.

    On the ‘inferiority complex’ of the jurist in front of other scientists see Bobbio (1997).

  8. 8.

    Posner (1987).

  9. 9.

    Jori (1990, pp. 232–233) (‘if we are unable to scientifically describe the law, then the notion of applying it is senseless’, at 233, emphasis in the original).

  10. 10.

    For detailed reconstructions of this cultural environment, Villa (1984), Pino (2014) and Priel (2012).

  11. 11.

    Ross (1958).

  12. 12.

    Bobbio (1997).

  13. 13.

    This relation has sometimes been taken to the point of claiming that, since jurists are able to produce true statements, this very fact warrants the scientific character of their job: Aarnio (1981).

  14. 14.

    Miguel (2002, p. 5673); Comanducci (2014).

  15. 15.

    Ferrajoli (1989, ch 1); Pintore (1998); Redondo (2009).

  16. 16.

    For my part, I think that ‘truth’ may apply to empirical statements, but not to meaning-ascription statements—such as interpretive statements, whose basic formal structure is ‘Text T means M’. In the domain of interpretation, I think that the appropriate word, here, is not ‘true’, but rather something in the province of ‘reasonable’, ‘correct’, appropriate’, and alike. For critical assessments of the use of ‘truth’ in the context of legal interpretation, see Diciotti (1999) and Chiassoni (2016). More generally, see Patterson (1996).

  17. 17.

    Of course, in the present context I am totally discarding the problem of legal interpretation involving scientific concepts, i.e. concepts elaborated by some natural science such as physics, biology, genetics, etc. This problem raises very important epistemological and legitimacy issues, but it is an entirely different problem from the one I am dealing with in the present occasion. See Canale (2015).

  18. 18.

    See Kelsen (1960, ch VIII); Guastini (2011a, b, c, pp. 141–142); Id. (2012). But see also Peczenik (1989, pp. 33, 36); Chiassoni (2015); Id. (2016: see esp. 99, fn 8).

  19. 19.

    For the difference between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ interpretive scepticism, see Guastini (2011a, b, c). Radical interpretive scepticism claims that there is no meaning before interpretation— meaning is created by interpretation. Moderate interpretive scepticism, by contrast, claims that before interpretation there always are multiple (but not infinite) possible meanings, and interpretation consists in choosing among them.

  20. 20.

    For simplicity’s sake, in the following I will use ‘source of law’ to refer not only to a legally valid document (a ‘legal text’, such as a statute), but also to a portion of a legal text, selected in virtue of its syntactic unity (a ‘sentence’, in linguistic terms)—e.g., an article, or a portion of an article, of a statute. This is normally considered as the basic item of legal interpretation.

  21. 21.

    See for instance Kelsen (1960, p. 355): ‘jurisprudential interpretation is purely cognitive ascertainment of the meaning of legal norms. […] Jurisprudential interpretation can do no more than exhibit all possible meanings of a legal norm. Jurisprudence as cognition of law cannot decide between the possibilities exhibited by it, but must leave the decision to the legal organ […]’.

  22. 22.

    For this kind of criticism, see Gianformaggio [1988, p. 466 (on Kelsen)]; Villa [2012, p. 183 (on Guastini)]. Even Guastini, by the way, admits that cognitive interpretation is only rarely to be found in legal scholarship: see Guastini (2004, p. 86).

  23. 23.

    Cognitive interpretation is expressly qualified as scientific knowledge by Hans Kelsen and Riccardo Guastini (supra, fn 18). See for instance Guastini (2012, p. 152) (‘Cognitive interpretation is a purely scientific operation devoid of any practical effect – it belongs to the real of legal science properly understood’). See also Peczenik (1989, p. 33): ‘law-describing propositions […] report “value-freely” the content of statutes and other sources of law. When a lawyer utters a law-descriptive proposition, he certainly acts in a way similar to that of a scientist’.

  24. 24.

    For some inventories of such methods or canons of legal interpretation, see Alexy (2010); Tarello (1980, ch 8); MacCormick (2005, ch 7).

  25. 25.

    This ‘reasonableness’ qualification is sometimes present in Guastini (see for instance 2011a, b, c, p. 60); see also Chiassoni (2017a, b, p. 105).

  26. 26.

    See particularly Guastini (2011a, b, c, p. 36).

  27. 27.

    MacCormick (1978, p. 155): ‘the whole point of argument by analogy in law is that a rule can contribute to a decision on facts to which it is not directly applicable’.

  28. 28.

    This is acknowledged also by Guastini (1992, p. 135). See also Bobbio (2012), § 3. I have provided various examples to this effect in Pino (2013).

  29. 29.

    This point is well stressed by Diciotti (2013); but see already Tarello (1980, p. 392).

  30. 30.

    This model has been recently articulated in detail, and defended, by Chiassoni (2015).

  31. 31.

    See Guastini (2012).

  32. 32.

    Bobbio (1950), Villa (1984), and Nino (1993).

  33. 33.

    For a recent example, Rescigno (2003).

  34. 34.

    On this problem, see Laudan (1983) and Hansson (2017).

  35. 35.

    Kuhn (1962) and Lakatos (1970).

  36. 36.

    According to Riccardo Guastini, ‘science’ properly understood (including ‘legal science’) is a pure description, value-free, axiologically neutral: (2011a, b, c, pp. 439, 441 fn 7).

  37. 37.

    Something in this direction is suggested, for instance, by Bunge (1982, p. 372); Laudan (1983); Dupré (1995, p. 242).

  38. 38.

    See Laudan (1983, p. 120): “the labelling of a certain activity as ‘scientific’ or ‘unscientific’ has social and political ramifications which go well beyond the taxonomic task of sorting beliefs into two piles”.

  39. 39.

    See Kramer (2007, pp. 6–8) (on the ‘existentially weak mind-independence’ of the law).

  40. 40.

    This is the main point of Jori (2010). But of course this point is already present in Hart (1961) (on the social practice surrounding the rule of recognition).

  41. 41.

    On the ‘performative role’ played by legal science on its object, see Ferrajoli (2012, pp. 244–245); Id. (2016, pp. 208–209) (according to Ferrajoli, this performative role is normally overlooked, exactly in order to preserve the ‘scientific’ status of legal scholarship). This may be considered as just another way of making sense of Kelsen’s Grundnorm as a presuppostition of legal science.

  42. 42.

    Poggi (2008, p. 397). For an excellent overview of various juristic operations to this effect, see Ratti (2015). It is interesting to note that even Bobbio claimed that legal scholarship is a science insofar as it makes legislative language ‘rigorous’ [Bobbio (1997)].

  43. 43.

    Guastini (1987, pp. 183–184, 192); Id. (2012, p. 159).

  44. 44.

    On the inevitable ideological component in the work of the jurist, see Nino (1993, chs I, IV); Ferrajoli (2016, p. 208); Chiassoni (2017a, b, p. 271). I use ‘legal ideology’, here, in roughly the same sense as Alf Ross does (1958). Elsewhere, I have tried to use a concept of this sort to revisit and make sense of the Hartian ‘rule of recognition’: see Pino (2011); Id. (2015).

  45. 45.

    Chiassoni (2017a, b) and Dolcetti and Ratti (2013).

  46. 46.

    Diciotti (2006); Id. (2007).

  47. 47.

    Miguel (2002); Comanducci (2008, p. 427); Id. (2014, p. 290); Poggi (2008).

  48. 48.

    On various senses of ‘political’ that may be relevant in the context of judicial decision, see Waldron (1990, pp. 120–122).

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  1. Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Rome, Italy

    Giorgio Pino

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  1. Lisbon Centre for Research in Public Law (CIDP) and Lisbon Legal Theory Group (LxLTG), University of Lisbon School of Law, Lisbon, Portugal

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  2. Lisbon Centre for Research in Public Law (CIDP) and Lisbon Legal Theory Group (LxLTG), University of Lisbon School of Law, Lisbon, Portugal

    Pedro Moniz Lopes

  3. Lisbon Centre for Research in Public Law (CIDP) and Lisbon Legal Theory Group (LxLTG), University of Lisbon School of Law, Lisbon, Portugal

    Jorge Silva Sampaio

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Pino, G. (2019). The Politics of Legal Interpretation. In: Duarte, D., Moniz Lopes, P., Silva Sampaio, J. (eds) Legal Interpretation and Scientific Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18671-5_3

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