Interpretivism is a school of thought in contemporaryjurisprudence and thephilosophy of law.
Interpretivism claims that Law is not a set of given data,conventions or physical facts, but whatlawyers aim to construct or obtain in theirpractice. This marks a first difference between interpretivism andlegal positivism. But the refusal that law be a set ofgiven entities opposes interpretivism tonatural law too. There is no separation between law andmorality, although there are differences. This is not in accordance with the main claim of legal positivism. Law is notimmanent in nature nor do legal values and principles exist independently and outside of the legal practice itself. This is the opposite of the main claim of natural law theory.
In the English-speaking world, interpretivism is usually identified withRonald Dworkin's thesis on the nature oflaw as discussed in his text titledLaw's Empire, which is sometimes seen as a third way between natural law and legal positivism.
The concept also includes continental legalhermeneutics and authors such asHelmut Coing andEmilio Betti. Legal hermeneutics can be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics, whose main proponents in the 20th century areMartin Heidegger andHans-Georg Gadamer, both drawing onEdmund Husserl'sphenomenology. Hermeneutics has now expanded to many varied areas of research in thesocial sciences as an alternative to a conventionalist approach.
In a wider sense, interpretivism includes even the theses of, in chronological order,Josef Esser,Theodor Viehweg,Chaïm Perelman,Wolfgang Fikentscher,António Castanheira Neves,Friedrich Müller,Aulis Aarnio, andRobert Alexy.
