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List of contents
I: Interpretation and Law: Why is Interpretation Important for Law?; 1: Law, Philosophy and Interpretation; 2: Why Interpret?; II: Interpretation and Legal Reasoning: Law and Morality; 3: Law as Practical Reason; 4: Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory Revisited (Accepted May 20, 1999); 5: A Natural Law Theory of Interpretation; III: Interpretation and Application of Legal Rules, Vagueness and Defeasibility; 6: Justification and Application of Norms; 7: Critical Remarks on Robert Alexy's Special-Case Thesis; 8: Law, Love and Computers; 9: On Law and Logic; IV: Legal Interpretation and Politics; 10: Legal Analysis as Institutional Imagination; 11: The Inertia of Institutional Imagination: A Reply to Roberto Unger; V: Interpretation and Objectivity; 12: Law and Metaphysics; 13: Kripke's Case; 14: Working on the Chain Gang: Interpretation in Law and Literature; VI: Interpreting the Law; 15: Normative and Narrative Coherence in Legal Decision Making; 16: On Justification and Interpretation; 17: Authority Reasons in Legal Interpretation and Moral Reasoning 1; 18: Two Types of Substantive Reasons: The Core of A Theory of Common-Law Justification; 19: Reasonableness and Objectivity
About the author
Fernando Atria Lemaitre, Neil MacCormick
Summary
This title was first published in 2003. Leading contemporary essays on interpretation are assembled in this volume, which offsets them against a small number of "classical" works from earlier periods. It has long been recognized that textual sources (constitutions, statutes, precedents, commentaries) are central to developed systems of law and that interpretation of such texts is one highly important element in adjudication, legal practice and legal scholarship. Scholars have also contended that the totality of legal activity is "interpretive" in a wider sense and debates about objectivity have raged. The reasons for this development are here critically scrutinized.
