Contextualism, but not enought : a brief note on Villa’s Theory of Legal Interpretation

This essay examines the pragmatically oriented theory of legal interpretation proposed by Vittorio Villa, arguing that, despite its originality and merits, this theory does not yet recognize its proper place for the context. In particular, the author criticizes the thesis according to which meaning is a stratified concept arguing that this thesis does not describe the actual practices nor it fits to some others Villa’s thesis. Moreover, the author claims that Villa’s brilliant intuitions about (legal) interpretation would be better developed if he adhered to a more radical form of contextualism (i.e. a form of contextualism which admits, and which is able to account for the fact, that semantic and pragmatic factors influence each other so much that it is difficult to distinguish them and, in any way, pragmatic factors can overwhelm the semantic ones). According to the author, this would also allow Villa to account for some peculiarities of the legal practice that do not seem to find a suitable placement within his theory (at least at this stage of its development).