Legal Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the science of interpreting a text or specially a sacred text and understanding it in human context.

Hermeneutics can loosely be defined as the theory or philosophy of the interpretation of menaing. It is a central topic in the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of art and language and in literary criticism. This book, first published in 1980, gives a detailed overview and analysis of the main strands of contemporary hermeneutical thought. It includes a number of readings in order to give the reader a first-hand acquaintance with the subjects and the debates within it. [J. Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.]

Contemporary hermeneutical thought is too important to allow legal scholars simply to cull its fancy jargon with the intent of adding some sparkle to familiar and ossified jurisprudential debates. The transformation of hermeneutics in this century has generated excitement among philosophers precisely because this transformation has the liberating potential of presenting traditional problems in a new light, whether they be problems of theology, history, literary criticism, or aesthetics. The growing number of legal scholars exploring the themes of contemporary hermeneutics do so with equal excitement; their aim is to rethink traditional jurisprudential debates and to reveal more faithfully the phenomenology of legal practice. Contemporary hermeneutics is especially relevant to the legal profession, whose practice reveals a commitment to the centrality of interpretation but also an awareness that interpretation cannot be cabined as a set of procedures or methods without obscuring the inherent connections oflaw, morals, politics, and history. [The New Legal Hermeneutics – Francis J. Mootz III-1994]

Hermeneutical thinking does not produce pat answers or easy solutions to difficult legal problems. Hermeneutics neither supplies a method for correctly reading texts nor underwrites an authoritative interpretation of any given text, legal or otherwise. . . . It is worth noting, however, that the activity of questioning and adopting a suspicious attitude toward authority is at the heart of hermeneutical discourse. Hermeneutics involves confronting the aporias that face us, and it attempts to undermine, at least in partial ways, the calm assurances transmitted by the received views and legal orthodoxies.

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