Justice in legal interpretation Cover Image

Sprawiedliwość wykładni prawa
Justice in legal interpretation

Author(s): Olgierd Bogucki
Subject(s): Politics, Sociology of Law
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
Keywords: justice; legal interpretation; theory of law; theory of legal interpretation; philosophy of law

Summary/Abstract: Can we talk about justice in the interpretation of law? The aim of the article is to justify positive answer to this question and closer explication of the meaning (or rather meanings) of this answer. This aim is implemented by method of conceptual analysis – analysis of the main concepts related to justice and legal interpretation. Several statements have been made on the basis of the analysis. First of all, the justice of law and the justice of legal interpretation are two separate issues. If we are talking about justice in the process of legal interpretation, we mean, above all, procedural justice. In the case of legal interpretation, there is an imperfect procedural justice, which, however, shows a significant resemblance to pure procedural justice. Procedural justice in the interpretation of law means non-arbitrariness in judging between different interpretive variants representing different substantial concepts of justice. The more procedural justice there is in interpreting the law, the more exhaustive the set of rules for making it. Although the implementation of justice understood in this way is a prerequisite for achieving a substantially just result, it can not guarantee it, and in particular can not guarantee a full ethical rightness of the result.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 26 (2)
  • Page Range: 7-22
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish