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Legalism or legal formalism usually depicts judges as resolving cases by allegedly merely applying pre-existing legal rules. They do not seem to legislate, exercise discretion, balance or pursue policies, and they definitely do not look outside of conventional legal texts for guidance in deciding new cases. For them, the law is an autonomous domain of knowledge and technique. What they follow are the maxims of clarity, determinacy, and coherence of law. This perception of law and adjudication is sometimes designated as "an orthodox lawyering". However, at least in certain cases, it is very difficult to say that legalism is not an inappropriate theory or a method of legal interpretation. Different theories have attested that legal interpretation is much more than just legalism, which appears to be far too naïve. In the framework of modern legal interpretation, the following questions can be raised. Is it possible to integrate legalism in a coherent theory of legal interpretation? Is legalism as a distinctive theory of legal interpretation still a feasible theory of interpretation? How can such a formalist approach withstand a critique from Dworkinian moral interpretivism or accusations of being a myth, masking political preferences from legal realists? These and many other issues about legal interpretation are discussed in this book by prominent legal philosophers and legal theorists.

Toward an Informal Account of Legal Interpretation offers a viable account of law, judicial decision-making, and legal interpretation that is as fresh as it is familiar. The author expertly challenges the dominant mode of formalist theorizing and proposes an explanatory account of legal interpretation that can profitably be understood as an 'informal' intervention. Such an informal approach has no truck with either the claims of the formalists (i.e., that law is something separate from ideology) or those of the anti-formalists (i.e., that law is nothing other than ideological posturing). Hutchinson insists that, when understood properly, legal interpretation is an applied exercise in law-and-ideology; it is both constrained and unconstrained in equal measure. In developing this informalist account through a sustained application of the 'no vehicles in the park' rule, this book is wide-ranging in theoretical scope and substance, but also accessible and practical in style

"The purpose of this book is to cast light on the workings of language in international legal interpretation in the context of contemporary processes of globalisation. We take an explicit interdisciplinary perspective, which includes both legal theories of interpretation and linguistic theories of meaning, and both legal philosophy and the philosophy of language. The book treats the subject as it appears within and across different legal fields - international economic law, human rights law and international criminal law, EU law, and international arbitration. It also includes more general perspectives on international legal interpretation, among them comparative law, multilingualism and legal translation"--

Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law sheds light on the complicated process of language interpretation that adjudicators (judges and arbitrators) and legal practitioners adopt when they act within international legal systems. The book also analyzes the role that language and the diversity of languages and national legal cultures plays in different international legal systems.

"Language shapes and reflects how we think about the world. It engages and intrigues us. Our everyday use of language is quite effortless--we are all experts on our native tongues. Despite this, issues of language and meaning have long flummoxed the judges on whom we depend for the interpretation of our most fundamental legal texts. Should a judge feel confident in defining common words in the texts without the aid of a linguist? How is the meaning communicated by the text determined? Should the communicative meaning of texts be decisive, or at least influential? ... [Contributors] argue that the meaning of language is crucial to the interpretation of legal texts, such as statutes, constitutions, and contracts. Accordingly ... analysis of language from linguists, philosophers, and legal scholars should influence how courts interpret legal texts."--