Interpretivism (legal)

Interpretivism is a school of thought in contemporary jurisprudence and the philosophy of law.

The concept also includes continental legal hermeneutics and authors such as Helmut Coing and Emilio Betti.

Legal hermeneutics can be seen as a branch of philosophical hermeneutics, whose main authors in the 20th century are Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, both drawing on Edmund Husserl's phenomenology.

Hermeneutics has now expanded to many varied areas of research in the social 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, and Robert Alexy.