An Easy or a Modest Theory?

Abstract

Thomas Hochmann’s paper presents a defense of “scientific in- terpretation”, in the sense assigned by Kelsen to the term: the activity of determining all the possible meanings of legal rules. Nevertheless, he gives to this activity a quite different definition from the one by H. Kelsen or R. Guastini, for instance: in his view, the only relevant meanings are those which are admitted according to the syntactical and semantical rules of the given language –without any consideration to higher norms or the interpretive methods and legal doctrines in use in the given legal culture. He thus adopts a very narrow view of legal interpretation, which would not raise any particular difficulty, if it were not linked to a very restrictive definition of positive law (by assimilating legal norms and legal texts), which is itself bound up of a highly debatable conception of legal science (insofar as it leads to discrimination between “good” and “bad” interpretations of the law).