Category Books

Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law »

Authors: Ian MacLean, Quentin Skinner (Editor), James Tully
ISBN-13: 9780521020275, ISBN-10: 0521020271
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date Published: July 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)

This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence.

	List of illustrations
	Acknowledgements
	Notes on the presentation of the text
	Introduction	1
1	Contexts	12
	The study of Roman law in the Middle Ages and Renaissance	13
	Law and its status in the universities	19
	Legal texts: genres, production, presentation, distribution	30
	Justinian's prohibition of commentary and its interpretation	50
	The defence of legal pedagogy	59
2	Interpretation and the arts course	67
	Grammar	70
	Logic and dialectics	72
	Topics and rhetoric	75
	Interpretation in theology and medicine	82
	The development of legal pedagogy	83
3	Theories of interpretation and meaning	87
	The self-evident text	89
	Authority and interpretation	91
	Signification, reference, evidence and its interpretation	95
	The method	103
	Definition, etymology, division	104
	Modes of interpretation: declarative, extensive, restrictive	114
	Words and things: propriety, ambiguity, usage	125
	Cavillation: interpretation in bad faith	135
	Legal fictions	138
	Literal, subjective and objective meaning: verba, mens legislatoris and ratio legis	142
	Illocutionary and perlocutionary force: performatives	158
	Nonlinguisitc interpretation: custom and equity	171
4	Parallels and examples	179
	Suarez	179
	England	181
	Semantics and the law of slander	186
	Conclusion	203
	Bibliography of primary sources	215
	Index of citations from the Corpus Furis Civilis	226
	Index of names	229
	Index of terms	236