The Myth of Literal Meaning in Legal Interpretation

This essay challenges the idea according to which, in legal interpretation, a well-defined literal meaning is always (or in the most of cases) detectable. I will claim that this idea is untenable and, at any rate, when lawyers talk of literal meaning, they rarely refer to a totally a-contextual meaning; rather they refer to a meaning which is determined by contextual elements too, and is assumed to be unique and well determined precisely because of the determinacy and uniqueness of these elements. I will argue that even this idea is misleading and try to support an alternative view of meaning.