Interpretative Importance of Legal Principles for the Understanding of Legal Texts

Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 101 (1):52-59 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Law is a system of legal rules and legal principles. The distinction between them is a relative one. Always such definite major and minor premises are to be formed that the case can be subsumed under the rule and a conclusion, which includes the decision, can be drawn. This applies to legal principles that are operationalised by legal rules as well as to statutory forms of legal rules, which are often open as to their meaning and/or contain definitions that comprise elements of principles. The basic characteristic of legal principles is that they are value measures directing the definition of legal rules as to their contents, the understanding of the rules, and the manner of their application. Legal principles aim at a goal, have weight, and define the scope of the meaning within which the legal rules move. The operationalisation of legal principles is the _ratio decidendi_ that the court has to achieve in order to be able to decide in a concrete case. Legal principles live through the rules that are the reasons for the decision in a concrete case. New cases can be solved by a new operationalisation of legal principles or by analogous application of precedents if the new cases, in their essential elements, correspond to cases that have already been decided

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,394

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-04-30

Downloads
57 (#385,928)

6 months
10 (#383,814)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references