Legal Interpretation and Scientific Knowledge PDF Download

Author: David Duarte
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030186717
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This book discusses the question of whether legal interpretation is a scientific activity. The law’s dependency on language, at least for the usual communication purposes, not only makes legal interpretation the main task performed by those whose work involves the law, but also an unavoidable step in the process of resolving a legal case. This task of decoding the words and sentences used by normative authorities while enacting norms, carried out in compliance with the principles and rules of the natural language adopted, is prone to all of the difficulties stemming from the uncertainty intrinsic to all linguistic conventions. In this context, seeking to determine whether legal interpretation can be scientific or, in other words, can comply with the requirements for scientific knowledge, becomes a central question. In fact, the coherent application of the law depends on a knowledge regarding the meaning of normative sentences that can be classified (at least) as being structured, systematically organized and tendentially objective. Accordingly, this book focuses on analyzing precisely these problems; its respective contributions offer a range of revealing perspectives on both the problems and their ramifications.

Author: David L. Faigman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0716741695
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Is scientific information misused by this country’s court system and lawmakers? Today more than ever before, lawyers, politicians, and government administrators are forced to wrestle with scientific research and to employ scientific thinking. The results are often less than enlightened. In Legal Alchemy, David Faigman explores the ways the American legal system incorporates scientific knowledge into its decision making. Praised by both legal and scientific communities when it first appeared in hardcover, Legal Alchemy shows how science has been used and misused in a variety of settings, including • The Courtroom—from the O. J. Simpson trial to the Dow Corning silicone breast implant lawsuit to landmark cases such as Roe v. Wade. • The Legislature—where Congress uses scientific information to help enact legislation about clean air, cloning, and government science projects like the space station and the superconducting super collider. • Government Agencies—who use science to determine policy on a variety of topics, from regulating sport utility vehicles to reintroducing gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park. As Faigman describes these and other important cases, he provides disturbing evidence that many judges, juries, and members of Congress simply don’t understand the science behind their decisions. Finally, he offers suggestions on how the science and legal professions can overcome their miscommunication and work together more effectively.

Author: Adrian Vermeule
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674022102
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In this book, Adrian Vermeule shows that any approach to legal interpretation rests on institutional and empirical premises about the capacities of judges and the systemic effects of their rulings. He argues that legal interpretation is above all an exercise in decisionmaking under severe empirical uncertainty.

Author: Brian G. Slocum
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022644516X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Language shapes and reflects how we think about the world. It engages and intrigues us. Our everyday use of language is quite effortless—we are all experts on our native tongues. Despite this, issues of language and meaning have long flummoxed the judges on whom we depend for the interpretation of our most fundamental legal texts. Should a judge feel confident in defining common words in the texts without the aid of a linguist? How is the meaning communicated by the text determined? Should the communicative meaning of texts be decisive, or at least influential? To fully engage and probe these questions of interpretation, this volume draws upon a variety of experts from several fields, who collectively examine the interpretation of legal texts. In The Nature of Legal Interpretation, the contributors argue that the meaning of language is crucial to the interpretation of legal texts, such as statutes, constitutions, and contracts. Accordingly, expert analysis of language from linguists, philosophers, and legal scholars should influence how courts interpret legal texts. Offering insightful new interdisciplinary perspectives on originalism and legal interpretation, these essays put forth a significant and provocative discussion of how best to characterize the nature of language in legal texts.

Author: Aharon Barak
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841267
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive theory of legal interpretation, by a leading judge and legal theorist. Currently, legal philosophers and jurists apply different theories of interpretation to constitutions, statutes, rules, wills, and contracts. Aharon Barak argues that an alternative approach--purposive interpretation--allows jurists and scholars to approach all legal texts in a similar manner while remaining sensitive to the important differences. Moreover, regardless of whether purposive interpretation amounts to a unifying theory, it would still be superior to other methods of interpretation in tackling each kind of text separately. Barak explains purposive interpretation as follows: All legal interpretation must start by establishing a range of semantic meanings for a given text, from which the legal meaning is then drawn. In purposive interpretation, the text's "purpose" is the criterion for establishing which of the semantic meanings yields the legal meaning. Establishing the ultimate purpose--and thus the legal meaning--depends on the relationship between the subjective and objective purposes; that is, between the original intent of the text's author and the intent of a reasonable author and of the legal system at the time of interpretation. This is easy to establish when the subjective and objective purposes coincide. But when they don't, the relative weight given to each purpose depends on the nature of the text. For example, subjective purpose is given substantial weight in interpreting a will; objective purpose, in interpreting a constitution. Barak develops this theory with masterful scholarship and close attention to its practical application. Throughout, he contrasts his approach with that of textualists and neotextualists such as Antonin Scalia, pragmatists such as Richard Posner, and legal philosophers such as Ronald Dworkin. This book represents a profoundly important contribution to legal scholarship and a major alternative to interpretive approaches advanced by other leading figures in the judicial world.

Author: Patrick Nerhot
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792305934
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
PATRICKNERHOT Since the two operations overlap each other so much, speaking about fact and interpretation in legal science separately would undoubtedly be highly artificial. To speak about fact in law already brings in the operation we call interpretation. EquaHy, to speak about interpretation is to deal with the method of identifying reality and therefore, in large part, to enter the area of the question of fact. By way of example, Bemard Jackson's text, which we have placed in section 11 of the first part of this volume, could no doubt just as weH have found a horne in section I. This work is aimed at analyzing this interpretation of the operation of identifying fact on the one hand and identifying the meaning of a text on the other. All philosophies of law recognize themselves in the analysis they propose for this interpretation, and we too shall seek in this volume to fumish a few elements of use for this analysis. We wish however to make it clear that our endeavour is addressed not only to legal philosophers: the nature of the interpretive act in legal science is a matter of interest to the legal practitioner too. He will find in these pages, we believe, elements that will serve hirn in rcflcction on his daily work.

Author: David S. Caudill
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131704990X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Presenting examples of how literary accounts can provide a supplement to our understanding of science in law, this book challenges the view that law and science are completely different. It focuses on stories which explore the relationship between law and science, especially cultural images of science that prevail in legal contexts. Contrasting with other studies of the transfer and construction of expertise in legal settings, this book considers the intersection of three interdisciplinary projects: law and science, law and literature, and literature and science. Looking at the appropriation of scientific expertise into law from these perspectives, this book presents an original introduction into how we can gain insight into the use of science in the courtroom and in policy and regulatory settings through literary sources.

Author: Patrick Nerhot
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792310655
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The Analogy between Logic and Dialogic of Law.- Analogy as Legal Reasoning - The Hermeneutic Foundation of the Analogical Procedure.- Milking the Meter - On Analogy, Universalizability and World Views.- The Function of Analogy in Law: Return to Kant and Wittgenstein.- Analogy in Legal Science: Some Comparative Observations.- Legal Analogy between Interpretive Arguments and Productive Arguments.- Legal Knowledge and Meaning (The Example of Legal Analogy).- Analogical Reasoning and Legal Institutions.- Analogy in the Law.

Author: Antonin Scalia
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691174040
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
We are all familiar with the image of the immensely clever judge who discerns the best rule of common law for the case at hand. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a judge like this can maneuver through earlier cases to achieve the desired aim—"distinguishing one prior case on his left, straight-arming another one on his right, high-stepping away from another precedent about to tackle him from the rear, until (bravo!) he reaches the goal—good law." But is this common-law mindset, which is appropriate in its place, suitable also in statutory and constitutional interpretation? In a witty and trenchant essay, Justice Scalia answers this question with a resounding negative. In exploring the neglected art of statutory interpretation, Scalia urges that judges resist the temptation to use legislative intention and legislative history. In his view, it is incompatible with democratic government to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by what the judges think the lawgivers meant rather than by what the legislature actually promulgated. Eschewing the judicial lawmaking that is the essence of common law, judges should interpret statutes and regulations by focusing on the text itself. Scalia then extends this principle to constitutional law. He proposes that we abandon the notion of an everchanging Constitution and pay attention to the Constitution's original meaning. Although not subscribing to the “strict constructionism” that would prevent applying the Constitution to modern circumstances, Scalia emphatically rejects the idea that judges can properly “smuggle” in new rights or deny old rights by using the Due Process Clause, for instance. In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals. This essay is followed by four commentaries by Professors Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin, who engage Justice Scalia’s ideas about judicial interpretation from varying standpoints. In the spirit of debate, Justice Scalia responds to these critics. Featuring a new foreword that discusses Scalia’s impact, jurisprudence, and legacy, this witty and trenchant exchange illuminates the brilliance of one of the most influential legal minds of our time.

Author: Kent Greenawalt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190207965
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In Legal Interpretation, Kent Greenawalt focuses on the complex and multi-faceted topic of textual interpretation of the law. All law needs to be interpreted, and there are many ways to do it. But what sorts of questions must one seek to answer in interpreting law and what approach should one take in each case? Whose interpretations should be prioritized? Why would one be drawn to one strategy over another? And should legal interpretation seek to satisfy specific aims or general objectives? In order to provide the answers to these questions, Greenawalt explores the ways in which interpretive strategies from other disciplines--the philosophy of language, literary and musical interpretation, religious interpretation, and general interpretive theory--can augment and enrich methods of legal interpretation. Over the course of the book, he suggests how such forms of interpretation are analogous to legal interpretation--and points to those cases in which interpretation must rest on the distinctive aspects of legal theory, such as is the case with private documents. Furthermore, Greenawalt's meditation suggests that interpretive strategies from other disciplines can shed light on the essential nature of legal interpretation and provide roads by which to account for dissonance between various methods of interpretation. Legal Interpretation is a thought-provoking reflection on the ways that insights from a range of intellectual traditions can deepen our understanding of law, particularly with regard to constitutional law.