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Erschienen in:
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2020 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

Decision and Legal Interpretation

verfasst von : Paul W. Kahn

Erschienen in: The Political Dimension of Constitutional Law

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

What is the relationship of interpretation to decision? Many scholars believe that decision marks the limit of law, the point at which doctrine no longer determines judicial outcomes. Others believe outcomes are the result of political contests between sociologically identifiable groups. Theorists seem to have to choose between legal apologetics and political critique. Rejecting both views, this article argues that decision is a necessary condition of interpretation. It engages with Carl Schmitt’s claim that “Every political idea in one way or another takes a position on the ‘nature’ of man and presupposes that he is either ‘by nature good’ or ‘by nature evil.’” The decision of law is not about the state of the soul, but about the narrative frame. Legal interpretation begins with a choice between project and system. A project locates the origin of order in the deliberate act to realize an idea; a system believes order to be spontaneous and immanent. Writing a constitution is a project; the common law is a system. To interpret law as a project is to see man as naturally evil, for absent a plan we will have only the chaos of the state of nature. To interpret law as a system is to see man as naturally good, for he need only be himself for the regularities of law to emerge. This is the decision that grounds interpretation and, therefore, lies behind every legal claim and legal theory.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Expanding Legality and Losing Fundamental Law: On Martin Loughlin’s Dualist Conception of Public Law
Nächstes Kapitel An Alternative Political Theology: The Negative and Anticipatory Significance of the Constitutive Concepts of Constitutional Law
Fußnoten
1
The politics of this issue of jurisprudential disagreement exploded into view just 1 year later with the hearings on Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1987.
 
2
That unity, in the first instance, is the lawsuit itself.
 
3
The term comes from Alexander Bickel (Bickel 1962).
 
4
See also Boumediene (2008).
 
5
See Masterpiece Cakeshop (2018).
 
6
Famously, Dworkin argued that there are right answers even in hard cases (Dworkin 1978).
 
7
On popular constitutionalism, see Siegel (2008), Kramer (2004) and Tushnet (2006).
 
8
Thus, the importance of truth and reconciliation commissions as elements of a transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes. They are collective efforts to reconstruct the narrative (Minow 1998).
 
9
Today, we speak of the pareto optimal point.
 
10
Constitutional law is no different from contract and tort, which were the subjects of the new American law school, founded at Harvard by Christopher Langdell in 1870. The aim of the discipline is to set forth the immanent principles that informed the cases, where “[l]aw, considered as a science, consists of certain principles or doctrines. . . . Each of these doctrines has arrived at its present state by slow degrees . . . . This growth is to be traced in the main through a series of cases . . . .” (Langdell 1879, p. viii).
 
11
See the Court’s definition of the United States as “a Christian nation.” (Church of the Holy Trinity 1892, p. 471).
 
12
Speaking of legal theory in 1890, Pollock states, “The doctrine of evolution is nothing else than the historical method applied to the facts of nature; the historical method is nothing else than the doctrine of evolution applied to known societies and institutions.” (Pollock 1890, pp. 37–41).
 
13
Instead of project and system, Giorgio Agamben speaks of “transcendence” and “immanence.” (Agamben 2011). Nothing turns on the choice of terms. Transcendence and immanence capture the distinct forms of political narrative. Project requires a subject who transcends any particular commitment; system is always an order of immanence.
 
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Metadaten
Titel
Decision and Legal Interpretation
verfasst von
Paul W. Kahn
Copyright-Jahr
2020
Buch
The Political Dimension of Constitutional Law

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38458-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-38459-3

Copyright-Jahr: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38459-3_4

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