Truth in judicial interpretation from positivist and non-positivist perspectives
This paper considers possible methodological approaches to determine the correctness of judicial interpretation. In legal parlance, this correctness is usually equated with truth, although these terms reveal two different perspectives: justification of a court decision and its correlation with facts. The author analyzes fact-finding and norm-application in judicial process, pointing out procedural and cognitive factors which bring indeterminacy in the administration of justice. To circumvent this indeterminacy, a number of methodological solutions were proposed in legal philosophy. Among these solutions, the author addresses two main philosophical traditions in the law: positivism and nonpositivism. Within the range of these conceptions, the author examines how the most prominent representatives of positivism and non-positivism, Hans Kelsen and Ronald Dworkin respectively, tackled the problem of truth in judicial interpretation. In the author's opinion, the normative component in judicial interpretation cannot be described in the legal language in the terms “false” and “true”. Interpretation in the law deals with both normative and factual dimensions, being limited by the procedural frameworks imposed on judges by their legal system. Because of these frameworks, judges do not establish ultimate truths about facts - they work with statements about verisimilitude of factual statements conferring validity onto them, while trustworthiness of these statements is evaluated by judges against the backdrop of the coherence of narratives describing the facts and the evidence supporting these facts. Plausibility of this interpretation hinges on a coherent and consistent description of the normative system. A true interpretation is the one which reconstructs the meaning of the legal norm in the way that fits best the normative system and does not bring inconsistency or incoherence into it, while the normative system can be conceived of either as consisting only of legal norms and propositions (Kelsen) or also inclusive of principles and policies (Dworkin).
Keywords
судебное толкование,
истина в толковании,
истинностное значение,
действительность,
правовые нормы,
Ганс Кельзен,
юридический процесс,
Рональд Дворкин,
judicial interpretation,
truth in interpretation,
truth-value,
validity,
legal norms,
Hans Kelsen,
legal process,
Ronald DworkinAuthors
| Antonov Mikhail V. | Saint Petersburg Branch of Higher School of Economics | mantonov@hse.ru |
Всего: 1
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