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The Letter of the Law: Legal Reasoning in a Societal Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Marc Amstutz

Extract

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In order to introduce the riddle that is at the heart of my contemplations, I would like to tell a story taken from Ibn Arabis' myth of creation: God existed all alone in an eternity that has no beginning and no end. Yet, the names that were hidden within him, the most beautiful names of God that are found in the Koran in Sure 59, 24 yearned to manifest themselves. So God said: “I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be recognized; so I created the world”. The names within him heeded their yearning to be recognized and broke free from the hidden, godly being, as breath that has been held too long leaves the body.

Type
Legal Theory and Legal Sociology
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 4: The Law of the Network Society. A Tribute to Karl-Heinz Ladeur , 01 April 2009 , pp. 361 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by German Law Journal GbR 

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29 See Marcel Alexander Niggli/Marc Amstutz, Wittgenstein und Recht II: Über Parallelen zur Wittgensteinschen Philosophie in der rechtswissenschaftlichen Methodenlehre, in Gauchs Welt, Recht, Vertragsrecht, Baurecht, Festschrift für Peter Gauch zum 65, 161, 171 (Pierre Tercier et al. eds., 2004).Google Scholar

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56 In this connection, it is revealing that Engisch, Karl, Einführung in das juristische Denken, 110 (1997), describes the “central issue” of the legal theory of interpretation in the following way: If the content of the law, and therefore also its ultimate “interpretive goal”, are determined and established by the erstwhile and unique “intention” of the historic legislator in such a way that the legal theorist has to retrace the footsteps of the legal historian, can then the factual content of the law rest in itself and its ‘words', as being the, intention of the law', as an objective sense, independent of the, subjective’ meaning and intention of the historic legislator? This is the problem addressed by the so-called “Streit der juristischen Auslegungstheorien”; See also William N. Eskridge, Dynamic Statutory Interpretation, 135 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1479, 1480 (1987) on the implications for anglo-saxon law.Google Scholar

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67 When Derrida speaks of the absence of addressees, he means that we never know whether and how what we express is received by others in conversation with them. To turn this around: we can never be sure that the words we direct at persons present actually reach someone who is actually present. Any communication is therefore “suspended” (différée), despite it sometimes not seeming to be so; in other words, it is “deferred” (Jacques Derrida, Différance, in: Margins of Philosophy, 1, 13 et seq (Jacques Derrida, 1982). Even phonetic signs are thus immediately separated from their origin – one could also say from their context. (Jacques Derrida 1982a: Signature Event Context, in, Margins of Philosophy, 307, 317 (Jacques Derrida, 1982)). It is, in itself, a secondary effect that is nothing other than the written sign. This is why conversation to Derrida is – as written text is – a form of écriture or archi-écriture. Google Scholar

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74 These trial and error processes can be re-modelled using Piaget's equilibration theory (Jean Piaget, Six études de psychologie 134 (1964)); this in the sense of Manfred Aschke, Kommunikation, Koordination und soziales System: Theoretische Grundlagen für die Erklärung der Evolution von Kultur und Gesellschaft 196 (2006), who transformed and made this psychological theory fruitful in the context of systems theory and legal sociology.Google Scholar

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77 See Glensy, Rex D., Quasi-Global Social Norms, 38 Connecticut Law Review 81, 83 (2005), for more on the definition of social norms. Google Scholar

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83 See contributions and reports of discussion in Uwe Diederichsen/Wolfgang Sellert, Das BGB im Wandel der Epochen: 10. Symposion der Kommission “Die Funktion des Gesetzes in Geschichte und Gegenwart” (2002).Google Scholar

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86 I refer to Franz Bydlinksi, Juristische Methodenlehre und Rechtsbegriff, 2. Auflage (1991), merely as an (naturally symptomatic) example, who dedicated 10 out of 652 pages (pgs. 417 – 427) of his book on legal reasoning to the issue of facts. A remark on the side: this particular example shows very nicely how little importance is accredited to society in conventional legal reasoning doctrine.Google Scholar

87 See Pierre Moor: Pour une théorie micropolitique du droit, (2005), 87 et seq: “Ce qui pourtant est le problème essentiel a ainsi été abandonné au bord de la route: celui de la production concrète du droit et de ses méthodes. Autrement dit, et en prenant le terme de méthode au pied de la lettre: si, à partir des faits, le chemin y retourne, en passant (mais en passant seulement) par la norme, que signifie ce passage?”.Google Scholar

88 See e.g. MacCormick, Neil, Argumentation und Interpretation im Recht: “Rule Consequentialism” und rationale Rekonstruktion, in, Entscheidungsfolgen als Rechtsgründe: Folgenorientiertes Argumentieren in rechtsvergleichender Sicht, 39 (Gunther Teubner ed., 1995).Google Scholar

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92 Carbonnier, Jean, Flexible Droit: Pour une sociologie du droit sans rigueur (2001); also, see Pierre Moor, Pour une théorie micropolitique du droit, 49 (2001).Google Scholar

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94 In more detail, Amstutz, Marc, Hic sunt leones: Von kollektiver Marktbeherrschung und symbolischer Gesetzgebung im Coop/Waro-Entscheid der Wettbewerbskommission, in 9 sic! 673, 681 (2003).Google Scholar

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