The Nine Lives of Legal Interpretation

Abstract

Legal scholars talk and write about interpretation in terms of the meaningof words, and for many legal philosophers legal interpretation involvessubsuming particular situations under general rules. However, the more youexamine legal interpretation the more confusing the whole idea ofinterpretation becomes. The aim of this paper is to use Bernard Lonergan'sdiscussion of functional specialization to make sense of this disorderlystate of affairs.