Introduction:post-semantic interpretation 1
The uncertainty of legal interpretation 4
Legal interpretation and values 9
1 The shared nature of language 10
Reading Wittgenstein 10
Wittgenstein's way 11
The indeterminacy of meaning 15
The community as the foundation of language 18
Rules and a background for language 22
Meanings are lived 24
The principle of charity 28
Legal language games 29
Shifting meanings and the tragedy of law 32
A tragedy or something else? 35
2 Derrida on language and meaning 38
Grammatology 39
Writing and supplementarity 43
Differance 45
Textuality 49
Searle 's and Derrida's differences in meaning 51
Derrida saying 'yes' 55
Comparing Derrida and Wittgenstein 56
3 Reading the law - hermeneutics and deconstruction 59
A hermeneutic view on interpretation 59
Being open to the text 61
On the ethics of hermeneutics 64
Hermeneutics and law 66
Eco and the text's rights 67
Interpretation or use? 69
Deconstruction 71
Deconstruction between commentary and phenomenological reduction 76
Comparing deconstruction and hermeneutics 79
What could deconstruction mean for legal interpretation? 83
Ethical elements of deconstruction 85
Critchley's clotural reading 87
4 The ethics of language 92
Central themes in Levinasian ethics:responsibility for the other 93
The ethical relation is asymmetrical 97
The saying and the said 98
The third 105
The difficulty of law 106
A Levinasian theory of interpretation? 112
Miller and the ethics of reading 114
Returning to semantics 119
The twofold ethics of legal interpretation:textual and situational 120
Interpretation doing justice 121
5 Uncertain justice 123
Justice and the force of law 125
Justice in despair 129
The problem of the universal and the particular 131
Uncovering violence in legal interpretation 134
The irresponsibility of law 140
Accountability of the subject and responsibility of legal interpretation 144
Dissenting voices 148
Uncertainty,despair and consolation 155
What kind of judgments do we want? 156
Conclusion 159
Bibliography 163
Index 173