Arguing About Goals: The Diminishing Scope of Legal Reasoning

16 Pages Posted: 17 May 2010

See all articles by Pauline C. Westerman

Pauline C. Westerman

University of Groningen, Faculty of Law

Date Written: November 1, 2008

Abstract

This article investigates the implications of goal-legislation for legal argumentation. In goal-regulation the legislator formulates the aims to be reached, leaving it to the norm-addressee to draft the necessary rules. On the basis of six types of hard cases, it is argued that in such a system there is hardly room for constructing a ratio legis. Legal interpretation is largely reduced to concretisation. This implies that legal argumentation tends to become highly dependent on expert (non-legal) knowledge.

Keywords: Expert-knowledge, framework directives, hard cases, legal argumentation, legislation, ratio legis, regulation.

Suggested Citation

Westerman, Pauline C., Arguing About Goals: The Diminishing Scope of Legal Reasoning (November 1, 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1609612 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1609612

Pauline C. Westerman (Contact Author)

University of Groningen, Faculty of Law ( email )

9700 AS Groningen
Netherlands

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