A catalogue of legislative intentions

Abstract

The subjective doctrine holds that the meaning and content of legal provisions depend on the legislative intent that created them. This method is debatable for several reasons, among them the difficulty of identifying the legislative intentions that have relevance for interpretation. One aspect of this difficulty is that many different intentions may converge in one provision. The object of the paper is to catalogue and discuss some potential legislative intentions whose respective importance must be determined by the subjective doctrine. This diversity of intentions is due both to their source and to their content and scope. The paper examines whom legislative intentions belong to and which content they might have.