The Quest For Certainty Of Legal Interpretation

The uncertainty of the living world endows us with the impetus to quest for certainty. Certainty is the precondition of the existence and function of legal interpretation. The uncertainty of legal interpretation gives us the impetus to quest for its certainty. The rule of law is the rule of rules, and the existence of rules is embodied by their interpretations. China's legal interpretation system has a lot of problems, which endows the quest for the certainty of legal interpretation with practical significances.This article focuses on two issues: one is to prove theoretically the necessity and possibility of the quest for certainty of legal interpretation; the other more important one is to explore the possible approaches to quest for certainty of legal interpretation in practice. Through the first one we will strengthen our conviction of rule of law, and through the second one we will obtain relevant actual effects in practice.In analyzing relevant issues of certainty of legal interpretation, this article adopts the standpoint of philosophical hermeneutics. When applying to legal interpretation, philosophical hermeneutics will be adjusted to meet practical needs of such legal interpretation. However, the basic theory of philosophical hermeneutics will be consistent and interlinked. In exploring possible approaches to quest for certainty of legal interpretation, we have to use certain methods. The quest for certainty of legal interpretation becomes possible in the heated debate between ontology and methodology.This article has four chapters besides the introduction and conclusion with a total number of approximately 60,000 words.The introduction presents the origin of the certainty issue and the necessity of the quest for certainty of legal interpretation. It severs to command the basic philosophical standpoint of this article and echoes the conclusion. Its writing style is different from the four chapters of the main article. The first chapter outlined the history of predecessors'research on the article's key words: certainty, uncertainty, legal interpretation and hermeneutics. This article's opinions are based on that of the predecessors'and some of them are directly accepted from theirs. This chapter serves as the background of the article's analysis.The second chapter defines the key words and specifies the basic standpoint and research method of the article. As the concept of certainty is abstract and the language itself has defects, the certainty of the concept itself is also a problem. In this chapter we try to make our own definitions of the concepts based on the predecessors'understanding: the certainty of legal interpretation quested for by us is the intersubjectivity viewpoint of certainty, the consensus reached based on fully communication, and the exclusive interpretation applied in judicial pratice. The research method of the article is to search from ontology and methodology for the approach to quest for the certainty of legal interpretation.The third chapter explains in detail the reasons why legal interpretation is uncertain. Such reasons include the uncertainty of language, the internal uncertainty of legal interpretation (i.e. the uncertainty of understanding and interpretation themselves) and the external uncertainty of legal interpretation (mainly because of the interpreters). The chapter's aim is to provide guidance for the quest for certainty of legal interpretation along with the explanation of negative factors existing in the certainty of legal interpretation.Following the explanation in chapter three, the fourth chapter makes efforts to explore the possibilities of quest for certainty of legal interpretation through language path, method path and other paths (mainly from the interpreters'perspective). Language path deals with the issue mainly from the perspective of law text itself; method path address the issue from the internal perspective of legal interpretation's practicability; other paths deal with the issue from the interpreters'(judges') perspective. These three perspectives generally cover the basic factors of legal interpretation.At last, the conclusion reviews the significance of quest for certainty of legal interpretation. In response to the introduction, it connects the quest for certainty of legal interpretation with the conviction of rule of law and the conviction of life to demonstrate the article's basic standpoint of certainty.