Functions and Methodology of Legal Interpretation
The article highlights and enunciates the interplay between functions and the methodology of legal interpretation. First, discussed are three major functions of legal interpretation, namely the hermeneutic, organizational-imperative and argumentative. Expounded are the relations between a legal text, being an primary subject of interpretation, and secondary subjects thereof, including but not limited to legal principles, values under protection, tradition and case law. The matter in issue pertains to interactions between enacting and interpreting law. It is in the next part of the article that the term “legal interpretation” is spelt out, as well as methods of interpretation – both customary (literal, logical and purposive) and unconventional i.e. historical, teleological and comparative. This analysis will be used as a basis for remarks concerning the interplay between the process of interpretation, reasoning and application of law. Concluding the theoretical segment of the article is a discussion on whether a unified legal methodology may be established. What follows suit are two case studies with regard to not easily explicable and justifiable judgments of The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic.
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