Interpretivism (legal)

Interpretivism is a school of thought in contemporary jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. The main claims of interpretivism are that

In the English speaking world, interpretivism is usually identified with Ronald Dworkin's theses on the nature of law as discussed in his text titled Law's Empire, which is sometimes seen as a third way between natural law and legal positivism.

The concept also includes continental legal hermeneutics and authors such as Helmut Coing and Emilio Betti. Legal hermeneutics can be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics, whose main authors in the 20th century are Heidegger and Gadamer, both drawing on Husserl's phenomenology. Hermeneutics has now expanded to many varied areas of research in the social sciences as an alternative to a conventionalist approach.

In a wider sense, interpretivism includes even the theses of, in chronological order, Josef Esser, Theodor Viehweg, Chaim Perelman, Wolfgang Fikentscher, Castanheira Neves, Friedrich Müller, Aulis Aarnio and Robert Alexy.

Some question whether is there really such a thing called 'interpretivism', and the only way to really consider this is to wait for future debates between disciples of Dworkin and Hart.

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