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Gadamerian Hermeneutics In Practice As A Paradigm For Legal Interpretation And Analysis, Konstantin G. Vertsman

St. Mary's Law Journal

Both law-making and legal interpretation involve a hermeneutic process of negotiating prejudices. Through confronting a text and engaging in the process of question and answer, an interpretation is obtained, representing a mixture of the legal horizon set by the law and the negotiated prejudices of the interpreter. A just application of legal texts only occurs due to the prejudices formed through an individual and a social consciousness. This Article focuses on the hermeneutic process in judicial decisions as exposed by differing judicial approaches based on the degree of law-making authority undertaken by the judiciary. Then, this Article demonstrates the explicit …

The Concept Of “Elderly Citizens” In The Indonesian Constitution: A Critical Analysis, Ari Wahyudi Hertanto, Satya Arinanto, Jufrina Rizal

Indonesia Law Review

Human existence is the most important element of the law and the state. They contribute greatly to the growth and development of a nation. Despite their great contribution, all human beings will experience a gradual decrease in their physical and psychological capacity due to ageing. According to the latest Central Statistics Agency report, there exists 29.3 million elderly citizens in Indonesia. This figure is equivalent to 10.82% of the total population. To anticipate this demographic condition, the government ought to ensure the welfare of its elderly citizens in accordance with the mandate of the 1945 Constitution. However, the 1945 Constitution …

Hermeneutics For Legal Research And Analysis, Konstantin G. Vertsman

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Irrelevance Of Contemporary Academic Philosophy For Law: Recovering The Rhetorical Tradition / A Irrelevância Da Filosofia Acadêmica Contemporânea Para O Direito: Redescobrindo A Tradição Retórica, Francis J. Mootz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

This short essay was published as part of a volume celebrating the 75th Anniversary of Karl Llewellyn’s article “On Philosophy in American Law.” The author argues that academic philosophy is irrelevant to lawyers, and that lawyers have little use for philosophical inquiry. This situation can be corrected by returning to the rhetorical and hermeneutical features of legal practice and reclaiming these ancient traditions of philosophical thought.

Este breve ensaio foi originalmente publicado como parte de uma obra em celebração ao aniversário de 75 anos do artigo “On Philosophy in American Law” de Karl Llewellyn. Argumenta-se que a filosofia acadêmica é …

Authority And The Globalisation Of Inclusion And Exclusion: Author Meets Readers, Hand Lindahl, Christine Bell Prof, Friedrich Kratochwil, Hans-W. Micklitz, Carlos Thiebaut, Bert Van Roermund

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Authority is written against the background of intense resistance to globalization processes by a range of political movements and grassroots organizations. These processes are complex and have a variety of dimensions. One of these is the emergence of global legal orders, which I define, in a rough and ready manner, as relatively autonomous legal orders that claim or aspire to claim global validity for themselves. They too-most obviously the World Trade Organization (WTO)-are the butt of resistance. Whatever its forms and aspirations, resistance to globalization is fueled by their peculiar dynamic. Indeed, emergent global legal orders spawn massive exclusion when …

Of Moral Outrage In Judicial Opinions, Duane Rudolph

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Moral outrage is a substantive and remedial feature of our laws, and the Article addresses three questions overlooked in the scholarly literature. What do judges mean when they currently express moral outrage in the remedies portion of their opinions? Should judges express such moral outrage at all? If so, when? Relying on a branch of legal philosophy known as hermeneutics that deals with the interpretation and understanding of texts, the Article argues that in interpreting and understanding cases judges should express moral outrage when faced with individuals from communities whose voice has historically been at risk, is currently at risk, …

Legislation Meets Tradition: Interpretations And Implications Of The Volunteer Protection Act For Nonprofit Organizations As Viewed Through The Lens Of Hermeneutics, Patricia Groble, Nicholas C. Zingale, Joseph Mead

Journal of Public Management & Social Policy

Volunteers enable nonprofit organizations to reach more clients and more effectively fulfill their missions. However, the good done by these volunteers may be offset by their careless behavior. Rising fears that resulting lawsuits and monetary damages would deter potential volunteers from volunteering caused Congress to enact the Volunteer Protection Act. This research studies court decisions to ascertain whether the law fulfills its purpose and considers the implications of these interpretations for nonprofit managers. It also tests the usefulness of the hermeneutical approach to legal interpretation and to determine how the Act has changed as a result of these court decisions …

Legislation Meets Tradition: Interpretations And Implications Of The Volunteer Protection Act For Nonprofit Organizations As Viewed Through The Lens Of Hermeneutics, Patricia Groble, Nicholas C. Zingale, Joseph Mead

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Volunteers enable nonprofit organizations to reach more clients and more effectively fulfill their missions. However, the good done by these volunteers may be offset by their careless behavior. Rising fears that resulting lawsuits and monetary damages would deter potential volunteers from volunteering caused Congress to enact the Volunteer Protection Act. This research studies court decisions to ascertain whether the law fulfills its purpose and considers the implications of these interpretations for nonprofit managers. It also tests the usefulness of the hermeneutical approach to legal interpretation and to determine how the Act has changed as a result of these court decisions.

Should Chevron Have Two Steps?, Richard M. Re

Indiana Law Journal

Prominent judges and scholars have criticized the familiar Chevron deference scheme on the ground that its two steps are redundant. But each step of traditional two-step Chevron actually does unique interpretive work. In short, step one asks whether agency interpretations are mandatory, whereas step two asks whether they are reasonable. Other judges and scholars defend two-step Chevron on the ground that the second step should be equated with arbitrary-and-capricious review. But that approach makes Chevron partially redundant with the Administrative Procedure Act and compresses the distinct mandatoriness and reasonableness questions into an artificially singular first step. This Article identifies a …

On Creativity In Constitutional Interpretation, Pierre Schlag

Publications

In the present article a particular aspect of constitutional interpretation will be considered. This aspect is called "creative" and involves retrieving the meaning of an object of interpretation. It is with regard to this particular aspect or moment of interpretation that creativity is often viewed as something to be avoided, to be shunned. If the task at hand is to "retrieve" some meaning, then the idea that this meaning can be created, in whole or in part, seems quite simply antithetical to the enterprise at hand. It suffices to note that many jurists and legal thinkers believe that interpretation as …

Keep Your Nose Out Of My Business-A Look At Dog Sniffs In Public Places Versus The Home, Michael Mayer

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exile On Main Street: Competing Traditions And Due Process Dissent, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

Everybody loves great dissents. Professors teach them, students learn from them, and journalists quote them. Yet legal scholars have long puzzled over how dissents actually impact the development of doctrine. Recent work by notable empirical scholars proposes to measure the influence of dissents by reference to their subsequent citation in case law. This Article challenges the theoretical basis for this empirical approach and argues that it fails to account for the profound influence that uncited dissents have exerted in law. To overcome this gap in the empirical approach, this Article proposes an alternative method that permits analysis of contextual and …

Book Review: "Gustav Shpet’S Contribution To Philosophy And Cultural Theory", Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

The author reviews Gustav Shpet’s Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory edited by Galin Tihanov. The volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the significance of the Russian philosopher Gustav Shpet (1879-1937) in the development of phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, literary theory, psychology, and cultural criticism.

Hermeneutics And Judicial Interpretation, Fernando Armando Ribeiro

fernando armando ribeiro

Modern hermeneutics teaches us that everything which is perceived and represented by human beings refers to a process of interpretation, and that the world comes to mind through language. Therefore, Law depends on the hermeneutic mediation. Without hermeneutics there is no law, only normative texts. This paper makes use of the philosophical hermeneutics by Gadamer to investigate the limits and possibilities of judicial interpretation. The paper explores the contribution of philosophical hermeneutics to a new model of rationality and how it can influence the application of Law, and not only legal theory. Therefore, we will examine some of the most …

Unenumerated Constitutional Rights And Unenumerated Biblical Obligations: A Preliminary Study In Comparative Hermeneutics, Samuel J. Levine

Samuel J. Levine

In his 1986 Yale Law Journal article, Robert Cover wrote of an explosion of legal scholarship placing interpretation at the crux of the enterprise of law. As part of the continuing emphasis on hermeneutics in constitutional interpretation, a body of literature has emerged comparing constitutional textual analysis to Biblical hermeneutics. This scholarship has been based on the recognition that, like the Constitution, the Bible functions as an authoritative legal text that must be interpreted in order to serve as the foundation for a living community. Levine looks at a basic hermeneutic device common to both Biblical and constitutional interpretation, the …

Hermenêutica Americana Feia / Ugly American Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

This article is part of a Symposium that provides a forum for comparing legal herme-neutics as articulated by four scholars from the United States and four scholars from Brazil. The article embraces this cross-cultural event by asking whether American legal hermeneutics is “ugly” and is practiced by “ugly Americans.” The pejorative cast of this terminology is obvious and intentional, but it is also ambiguous and multi-layered. The Essay unfolds various dimensions of ugly American hermeneutics and suggests that - ugly though they may be -American scholars still can make some important contribu-tions to the worldwide conversation regarding legal hermeneutics. It …

The Hermeneutical And Rhetorical Nature Of Law, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

In its most venal manifestation, scholarly writing betrays the anxiety of influence by claiming to offer a radically new solution to age-old conundrums. The goal is to make a clean break from a traditional path of thought that has become trapped in a cul-de-sac, to make progress by finding a new way forward. Not so with Jean Porter’s work, and particularly her most recent book. Professor Porter demonstrates that thinking through an established tradition – one that has responded to numerous challenges within very different contexts over several millennia – can sometimes offer the most productive response to contemporary dilemmas. …

Ugly American Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Nevada Law Journal

This article will appear in a Symposium on comparative legal hermeneutics that includes four articles by American scholars and four articles by Brazilian scholars. I argue that the "ugly American" hermeneutics exemplified in Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller is unfortunate, even if we supplement Justice Scalia's hermeneutical fantasy with the much more careful and balanced philosophical work by Larry Solum, Keith Whittington and other scholars. Nevertheless, the pragmatic work of interpretation by lawyers and judges in the day-to-day world of legal practice shows a plain-faced integrity of which we Americans can be proud.

The Empty Tomb: Post-Critical Legal Hermeneutics, Peter Goodrich

Nevada Law Journal

There is nothing more refreshing than a successful failure. A momentary flaring of flamboyance. A near miss. Fifteen weeks as media monarchs; a good part—a small part—of a decade as a political threat to the order of the academy, if not the stability of the system. The affective bonds and the institutional disruption of youthful and latterly not-so-young dissidents and socialist sympathizers within the law schools definitely had their excitements, their impetus and novelties, and then they grew old, got rejected, disappeared into the shadows, backrooms, and faculty lounges. The various histories assign different figures to the failure of critical …

Hermeneutics- The Path Of The Hermeneutic-Ontological Shift And The Decolonial Shift, Celso Luiz Ludwig

Nevada Law Journal

The purpose of the reflections that follow is to highlight the meaning and importance of the hermeneutic shift produced by the work of Gadamer, to consider some of his themes and categories, and to extend the meaning of this hermeneutic rationality to the legal field in terms of a new conception of interpretation. A second objective is to catch sight of new theoretical perspectives, having as a starting point the unfolding of practical philosophy into hermeneutic philosophy carried out by Gadamer. This article aims at recuperating, among other things, the fundamental hermeneutic problem, so as to obtain a glimpse into …

The Existential Subject Of Rights And Private Law: The Example Of The Indian Issue In Brazil, Jose Carlos Moreira Da Silva Filho

Nevada Law Journal

The issue of the juridical subject has been a topic of discussion as part of the rethinking of the classical jurisprudential concepts in Brazil. In particular, some authors have written about the “repersonalization of private law.” This has opened a promising path of inquiry regarding the legal subject for at least four major reasons. First, continental private law is the classical field to discuss the subject of rights. Second, the focus of private law remains the concept of the person, opening an important space to recover the moral philosophy in law. Third, the repersonalization of private law demonstrates the necessity …

Constitution, Human Rights And Republic: A Necessary Dialogue Between Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics And Boaventura De Sousa Santos's Diatopic Heremeneutics, Jania Maria Lopes Saldanha, Jose Luis Bolzan De Morais

Nevada Law Journal

When we think about the concept of human rights—including all the possible ways of its realization, and considering the complementarities and also the unity of different dimensions of the concept—we confront several difficult questions. In particular, in an age when constitutions and constitutional doctrine have already incorporated a substantive body of human rights law, we must address how some of the constitutional promises regarding individual rights have not been fulfilled. Additionally, we must consider how rights that foster solidarity in the economic, social, and cultural spheres have not been recognized.

This article operates on two levels. On one level, we …

Deconstructing The Models Of Judges: Legal Hermeneutics And Beyond The Subject-Object Paradigm, Lenio Luiz Streck

Nevada Law Journal

The linguistic-ontological turn has brought uncountable consequences to the interpretation of Law. However, dogmatic-legal knowledge remains hostage to a judicial protagonism, a philosophy of consciousness that, together with legal discretion, represent two sides of the same coin. The criticism of judicial discretion is a matter of democracy: decisions must be coherent, assuring the integrity of Law by reinforcing the normative power of the Constitution from which arises the need for correct answers in Law.

Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor

Nevada Law Journal

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. I want to explore this metaphor and the insights it may offer us for better understanding legal interpretation. As in the opening epigraph from James Boyd White, I shall develop the metaphor of the text as window in three ways: the text may be transparent, opaque, or translucent. My goal will be to argue that the best way to understand legal interpretation is to conceive of the legal text as translucent, but along the way I will compare the merits also of considering …

As Time Goes By: Hermeneutics And Originalism, John T. Valauri

Nevada Law Journal

What is the continuing relevance of hermeneutics to legal theory in general and to constitutional theory in particular if we are all originalists now? Both seem to be vital despite the decline of interest in hermeneutics recently. This article argues for the continuing relevance of hermeneutics to both fields because of the centrality of issues of application and practical reasoning in both. Law seeks for find the meaning of texts applied over time; legal texts are truly letters of transit. That we are all originalists, yet still have the same sort of interpretive debates we have always had, only indicates …

Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor

Articles

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. In legal interpretation, the metaphor has been developed in two ways – the legal text as transparent or opaque – and the Article proposes a third – the legal text as translucent. The claim that the legal text is transparent has been associated with more liberal methodological approaches. According to this view (often articulated by critics), the legal text does not markedly delimit meaning. Delimitation comes from the interpreters. By contrast, stress on the opacity of the legal text comes from those who …

Ugly American Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article will appear in a Symposium on comparative legal hermeneutics that includes four articles by American scholars and four articles by Brazilian scholars. I argue that the "ugly American" hermeneutics exemplified in Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller is unfortunate, even if we supplement Justice Scalia's hermeneutical fantasy with the much more careful and balanced philosophical work by Larry Solum, Keith Whittington and other scholars. Nevertheless, the pragmatic work of interpretation by lawyers and judges in the day-to-day world of legal practice shows a plain-faced integrity of which we Americans can be proud.

Statutory Construction And Biblical Hermeneutics- Law In The Service Of The Gospel?, Neil J. Foster

Neil J Foster

This paper explores the connections between the principles that judges use to interpret statutes, and the principles used by Biblical scholars to interpret the Bible.

Faithful Hermeneutics, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools on January 9, 2009 as part of a panel on "Scriptural and Constitutional Hermeneutics." The panel was co-sponsored by the Law and Religion Section, Section on Jewish Law, and Section on Islamic Law, and the papers will be published by the Michigan State Law Review.

My article compares legal and religious hermeneutics by exploring the dual nature of what I term "faithful hermeneutics." The ambiguity evoked by this phrase is intentional. On one hand, it suggests an investigation of the relationship between legal and religious …

Vico's "Ingenious Method" And Legal Education, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Contemporary discussions about the need to reform legal education, culminating in the 2007 Carnegie Report, should be put into a broader historical, philosophical and ethical perspective. Three hundred years ago the Italian humanist, Giambattista Vico delivered his famous oration, "On the Study Methods of Our Time," in which he lamented the rise of Cartesian critical philosophy at the expense of the cultivation of imagination, prudence and eloquence. Vico discussed law and legal education as his primary example, and his oration therefore provides an incredible resource for our contemporary deliberations.

Part One considers the literature addressing the demise of legal professionalism …