Abstract
The historical debates about legal interpretation are, simultaneously, products of the longue durée from as far back as Roman origins, and the outcomes of more recent contexts. From this perspective, the period between the end of the 17th century – with the works of Hobbes, De Luca and Domat – and the beginning of the 19th century – with the trends disseminated by Zachariae and Thibaut in Germany – was an era of intensive thinking about judicial power and hermeneutic methods. While Montesquieu, Blackstone or Beccaria proposed their solutions to these problems, the development of the modern State, alongside the revolutionary process in France and the greater part of Europe made the 18th century a turning point in the relations between law and those interpreting it.
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Notes
- 1.
Jan Schröder, Theorie des Interpretation von Humanistik bis zur Romantik. Rechtswissenschaft, Philosophie, Theologie, Stuttgart, Steiner, 2001, pp. 166–167.
- 2.
Saverio Masuelli, “In claris non fit interpretatio. Alle origine del brocardo”, Rivista di Diritto Romano, 2002, II, pp. 401–424.
- 3.
Paul Hazard, La Crise de la conscience européenne 1680–1715, Paris, Boivin et Cie, 1935, pp. 186–197.
- 4.
Foucault has used Hobbes’s Logics (1655) as a first step for a new critical analysis of language: Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Paris, Gallimard, “Bibliothèque des sciences humaines”, 1966, pp. 95, 108 and 133.
- 5.
Donal R. Coquillette, Francis Bacon, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1992, pp. 277–280.
- 6.
Giovanni Battista De Luca, Il Dottore Volgare, Rome, G. Corvo, 1673, Proemio, p. 38; the same writer has rejected the interpretation of clear laws, but noted that this case was rare: Lo stilo legale, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2010, pp. 82–83.
- 7.
John Chipman Gray, The Nature and the Sources of the Law, New York, Columbia University Press, 1916, pp. 162–166.
- 8.
William Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly 1676–1761, Cambridge, James Clarke, p. 36.
- 9.
Paolo Grossi, L’ordine giuridico medievale, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1996, pp. 162–168 about this conception of legal science as interpretatio.
- 10.
Montesquieu, Pensées. Le Spicilège, ed. Louis Desgraves, Paris, Robert Laffont, coll. “Bouquins”, 1991, especially pensée n° 1226 (p. 411) and n° 2266 (p. 658).
- 11.
Ludovica Antonio Muratori, Dei difetti della girusprudenza, reedited by Elio Tavilla, Bologna, Forna, 2001, especially pp. 10–18.
- 12.
In his work Sulla interpretazione delle leggi (1765): Paolo Alvazzi del Frate, L’interpretazione autentica nel XVIII secolo. Divieto di interpretatio e riferimento al legislatore nell’illuminismo giuridico, Torino, Giappichelli, 2000, pp. 123–125.
- 13.
Discourse of the 29th March of 1790 (using the notion of judicial syllogism), Archives parlementaires, vol. XII, pp. 411–429.
- 14.
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765–1769, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979, vol. I, pp. 69–71 and 86–91 about the rules of interpretation of statutory laws.
- 15.
Paul O. Carrese, The Cloaking of Power. Montesquieu, Blackstone and the Rise of Judicial Activism, Chicago-London, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 138–154 for this convincing interpretation of an hidden plan in Montesquieu’s and Blackstone’s formulas.
- 16.
Jeremy Bentham, Of Laws in General, ed. by H. L. A. Hart, London, The Athlone Press, 1970, pp. 152–163.
- 17.
Paolo Alvazzi del Frate, op. cit., pp. 72–81; Giovanni Tarello, Storia della cultura giurdica moderna, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1976, p. 492.
- 18.
Karl Salomo Zachariae, Versuch einer allgemeiner Hermeneutik des Rechts, Heidelberg, 1805.
- 19.
Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, Theorie der logischen Auslegung des römischen Rechts, Heidelberg, 1806.
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Halpérin, JL. (2011). Legal Interpretation in 18th Century Europe: Doctrinal Debates Versus Political Change. In: Morigiwa, Y., Stolleis, M., Halperin, JL. (eds) Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 95. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1506-6_10
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