Legislative history, ratio legis, and the concept of the rational legislator

Abstract

In Polish legal theory, the concept of the rational legislator-an ideal type of lawmaker that fulfills certain assumptions regarding its knowledge and values-plays a profound role in the process of legal interpretation. In this context, the concept of the rational lawmaker is best understood as a set of methodological directives that govern the process of legal analysis. These rules enable the translation of ambiguous and often inconsistent texts of legal statutes into a coherent system of unequivocal legal norms. Yet if the concept of the rational legislator is accepted as the basis of legal interpretation, the ratio legis of a statute must be determined using sources that can be conventionally attributed to the rational lawmaker. These include the text of the statute in question, its preamble, and the values that can be decoded from other legal texts, primarily from the constitution. Nevertheless, as an ontological gap exists between the rational lawmaker and actual legislators, the use of legislative history in the process of the analysis of ratio legis is somewhat questionable. Aside from providing methodological background for the concepts of humanistic interpretation and the rational legislator, this article explores the difficulties involved in applying legislative history to the abovementioned paradigm of legal interpretation and aims to assess how, if at all, this can be reconciled with the idea of the rational lawmaker.