Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Published in:
Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Decision and Legal Interpretation

Author : Paul W. Kahn

Published in: The Political Dimension of Constitutional Law

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Log in

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config
loading …

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.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 102.000 Bücher
  • über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Automobil + Motoren
  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
  • Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
  • Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

  • über 67.000 Bücher
  • über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

  • Bauwesen + Immobilien
  • Business IT + Informatik
  • Finance + Banking
  • Management + Führung
  • Marketing + Vertrieb
  • Versicherung + Risiko




Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now
previous chapter Expanding Legality and Losing Fundamental Law: On Martin Loughlin’s Dualist Conception of Public Law
next chapter An Alternative Political Theology: The Negative and Anticipatory Significance of the Constitutive Concepts of Constitutional Law
Footnotes
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.
 
Literature
Agamben, G. (2011). The kingdom and the glory: For a theological genealogy of economy and government (Lorenzo Chiesa, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bickel, A. (1962). The least dangerous branch: The supreme court at the bar of politics (2nd ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Blackstone, W. (1765). Commentaries. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008) (Roberts, C.J., dissenting).
Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386 (1798) (Iredell, J., concurring).
Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892).
Cover, R. (1983). The Supreme Court, 1982 Term—Foreword: Nomos and narrative. Harvard Law Review, 97, 4–68.CrossRef
Dworkin, R. (1978). Taking rights seriously. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Dworkin, R. (1986). Law’s empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fisher, S. G. (1862). The trial of the constitution. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Frank, J. (1930). Law and the modern mind. New York: Brentano’s.
Gillman, H. (2001). Review: What’s law got to do with it? Judicial behavioralists test the “Legal Model” of judicial decision making. Law and Social Inquiry, 26, 465–504.CrossRef
Grewal, D. S. (forthcoming). The invention of the economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Grey, T. (1983). Langdell’s orthodoxy. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 45, 1–53.
Hamilton, A. (1781). Federalist No. 1. In C. Rossiter (Ed.), 1961. The Federalist Papers: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay. New York: Signet.
Hart, H. L. A. (1961). The concept of law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holmes, O. W. (1897). The path of the law. Harvard Law Review, 10, 457–478.CrossRef
Kahn, P. (1992). Legitimacy and history: Self-government in American Constitutional Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kahn, P. (1997). The reign of law. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kahn, P. (1999). The cultural study of law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kahn, P. (2008). Sacred violence: Torture, terror, and sovereignty. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRef
Kahn, P. (2011). Political theology: Four new chapters on the concept of sovereignty. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kahn, P. (2016). Making the case: The art of the judicial opinion. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRef
Kahn, P. (2019). Origins of order: Project and system in the American legal imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRef
Kant, I. (1785). Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Berlin: Verlag von L. Heimann. English Edition: Kant, I. (1873). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Trans.). New York: Green and Company.
Kramer, L. (2004). The people themselves: Popular constitutionalism and judicial review. New York: Oxford University Press.
Langdell, C. C. (1879). A selection of cases on the law of contracts (2nd ed.). Boston: Little, Brown.
Lilla, M. (2007). The Stillborn God: Religion, politics, and the Modern West. New York: Vintage Books.
Lincoln, A. (1865). Second inaugural address.
Locke, J. (1689). Two treatises on Civil Government. London: George Routledge and Sons.
Mandeville, B. (1729). The fable of the bees; or, Private vices, Publick benefits. London: Penguin Books.
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018).
Minow, M. (1998). Between vengeance and forgiveness: Facing history after genocide and mass violence. Boston: Beacon.
Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015).
Pollock, F. (1890). English opportunities in historical and comparative opportunities, Oxford lectures and other discourses. London: Macmillan.
Rana, A. (2015). Constitutionalism and the foundations of the security state. California Law Review, 103, 335–386.
Schmitt, C. (1922). Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. English Edition: Schmitt, C. (2005). Political theology: Four chapters on the concept of sovereignty (George Schwab, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schmitt, C. (1932). Der Begriff des Politischen. Munich: Duncker & Humblot. English Edition: Schmitt, C. (1996). The concept of the political (George Schwab, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sheehan, J., & Wahrman, D. (2015). Invisible hands: Self-organization and the eighteenth century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRef
Siegel, R. (2008). Dead or alive: Originalism as popular constitutionalism in Heller. Harvard Law Review, 122, 191–245.
Smith, A. (1776). The wealth of nations. New York: Bantam Classics.
Taylor, C. (2003). Modern social imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thayer, J. B. (1892). A selection of cases on evidence at the common law. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Thayer, J. B. (1899). Our new possessions. Harvard Law Review, 12, 464–485.CrossRef
Tiedeman, C. G. (1890). The unwritten constitution of the United States. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Tushnet, M. (2006). Popular constitutionalism as political law. Chicago-Kent Law Review, 81, 991–1006.
Unger, R. M. (1996). What should legal analysis become? London: Verso.
Viner, J. (1972). The role of providence in the social order: An essay in intellectual history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Washington, G. (1796). Farewell address. In V. H. Paltsits (Ed.), Washington’s farewell address, in facsimile. New York: New York Public Library.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophische Untersuchungen (English edition: Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigation (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.)). Oxford: Blackwell.
Metadata
Title
Decision and Legal Interpretation
Author
Paul W. Kahn
Copyright Year
2020
Book
The Political Dimension of Constitutional Law

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

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

Copyright Year: 2020

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

Premium Partner

    Image Credits