Observing laws through “understanding eyes” : Verbal Signs and Meanings in Legal Discourse

Legal discourse is characterized by many layers of verbal signs that refer, according to the context (historical, social, cultural), to diverse meanings. In this article I discuss two theses. (Th. i.) Law is, like language, based on signs. These signs are like “clues” that suggest possible semantic operations but only through an interpretive process meanings come into being. (Th. ii.) In law, like in ordinary language, signs are the consequence of a necessity, of a need of knowing the world and of ordering it according to categories. In law, this necessity has a peculiar nature because it originates in the decision-making process and because its consequences are normative and produce effects on life and reality; analogical inference offers a good example of the connection between the need to fix the semantic content of verbal signs (often intensional) and the decision-making process. Meanings in legal discourse are thus intersubjective, time-related and are in a permanent relational with the historical interpretant.