‘What’s the Plan?’: On Interpretation and Meta-interpretation in Scott Shapiro’s Legality

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter seeks to explain and evaluate Shapiro’s theory of legal interpretation, as it is outlined in his recent book ‘Legality’. More specifically, in the following I will try to provide (a) a reconstruction of Shapiro’s theory of legal interpretation, as it is developed in ‘Legality’; (b) an assessment of this theory of interpretation on its own terms (i.e. its internal coherence, its overall persuasiveness); and (c) an evaluation of the compatibility of this theory of legal interpretation with the general project of ‘law as plan’.KeywordsLegal SystemHard CaseMaster PlanLegal NormLegal ReasoningThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.