Aarnio’s theory of the justification of legal interpretations

Abstract

Aulis Aarnio addresses the question of how legal interpretations should be justified. Aarnio considers a justification to be rational only if the justification process has been conducted in a rational way, and if the final result of this process is acceptable to the legal community. According to Aarnio, a theory concerning the justification of legal interpretations should contain a procedural component specifying the conditions of rationality for legal discussions, and a substantial component specifying the material conditions of acceptability for the final result. The procedural component of Aarnio’s theory formulates rules for the rationality of legal discussions. The substantial component specifies when the result of a legal interpretation can be called acceptable. Aarnio considers such a result acceptable if it is acceptable to a particular legal community in which there is consensus with respect to certain norms and values. In this chapter, I explain in more detail how these ideas are developed in Aarnio’s theory. As an introduction to Aarnio’s conceptual framework, Sect. 8.2 will deal with the concept of an interpretation standpoint, and Sect. 8.3 will show how such a standpoint is justified. The topic of Sect. 8.4 is the distinction between the rationality and acceptability of legal interpretations. The Sects. 8.5 and 8.6 examine the role of the concepts rationality and acceptability in Aarnio’s theory. Finally, Sect. 8.7 specifies those parts of Aarnio’s theory that are of particular importance for the analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation and for a further development of a theory of legal argumentation.