The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Interpretivism and the Limits of Law, edited by Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki, Francesca Poggi, & Izabela Skoczeń. Here is the abstract:
What does it mean to understand the law? This challenging book discusses whether and how understanding the law is qualitatively different from understanding a different, non-legal text or linguistic utterance, and whether knowledge of a language is sufficient to understand legal content in that language.
Providing a comprehensive overview of current studies of interpretivism, both in the common and civil law systems, this book applies state of the art theories and tools of modern philosophy of language to shed new light on traditional questions in legal theory. Chapters discuss the normative importance and descriptive impact of moral inferences in legal interpretation and critically analyse the claims of legal interpretivism, uncovering the most recent versions of legal positivism. The impressive selection of leading contributors explore an array of important topics including metaethics, expressivism and legal semantics.
Outlining a new direction of study and delineating the path for future research on moral inferences in legal interpretation, this timely book will be a thought-provoking read for legal scholars and students interested in legal theory, philosophy and interpretation.
And from the reviews:
‘This volume makes important contributions to the literature on legal interpretation and is essential reading for any jurisprudential scholar or legal practitioner concerned to understand how the content of the law depends on the communicative content that lawgivers intend to transmit. A very worthwhile read.’ -- Alexander Sarch, University of Surrey School of Law, UK
‘Interpretivism and the Limits of Law offers a thorough, searching assessment of major theories of the determinants of law’s content by an impressive range of distinguished legal scholars from around the world. It is an essential intervention into a debate that has engaged legal theorists for decades, adding hosts of new insights and refining the debate in critical ways. It establishes a new point of departure for future theoretical work in this area.’ -- Gerald Postema, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US
Very impressive lineup. Highly recommended.
