Maritza V. Castro Frías, "Beyond the Basics
of Statutory Interpretation", International Journal for the Semiotics
of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. XI
no.32 (1998), 115-153: This article compares two documents about statutory
interpretation. The first one, the Chilean Civil Code's rules about
statutory interpretation, was drafted by Andrés Bello y López,
one of the best humanists of Latin-America. The second document, the Note
on the rudiments of Statutory Interpretation belongs to two American
authors, Henry M. Hart, Jr., and Albert M. Sacks. In order
to compare such different texts, the first part of the article follows Greimas'
semiotic model as much as found helpful to provide an objective basis for
the second part, whose main claims are: (1) The note constrain the scope
of discretion of the interpretative process. (2) Bello's rules leave room
for the interpreter to refer to general principles of the legislation and
natural equity to find the genuine meaning of the law. (3) Note's section
H presents many problems about both the attributions and proceeding of courts
and agencies with primordial responsibility in applying the statute authoritatively.
(4) The chronological description of the task of interpretation stated by
note's section C conflicts with the idea that to find out the purpose of
the statute its words must be interpreted first. (5) Both texts understand
identically the words meaning and purpose. (6)Even though
the texts give a different meaning to the word context, they provide
similar tools to reach the meaning (or purpose) of the statute. e-mail:
maritza_castro@hotmail.com
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