Hermeneutics of Law: From Ancients to Contemporaries

This edited volume covers the debates, discussions and controversies surrounding the foundations of legal hermeneutics, the question of methods and legal techniques of interpretation, and the conditions for a fair legal interpretation. Primary questions addressed in this work include:

• Are there legal methods of interpretation more appropriate than others?
• Can we do without any method of interpretation and leave complete freedom in the assessment of legal texts to the Judge?
• Is legal interpretation solely an act of will of the Judge?

The substantial contributions are written by philosophers and jurists working in the history of legal hermeneutics: the Ancients (Juridico-Talmunic law, Roman law), the Middle-Ages (Roman-Canonical law), the Modern (Schleiermacher, Savigny, Ecole de l'Exégèse) and the contemporary era (Betti, Gadamer, Dworkin, Ricoeur, Fisch). The book is aimed at students and researchers working in philosophy and legal theory.