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Legal Writing and Research Commons

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Law and Society

St. Mary's Law Journal

Journal

2023

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Legal Writing and Research

Gadamerian Hermeneutics In Practice As A Paradigm For Legal Interpretation And Analysis, Konstantin G. Vertsman Mar 2023

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 …