Reviewing Argument Schemes for Legal Arguments of Statutory Interpretation

Abstract

The current legal paradigm assumes that legal decisions must be justified. Judges use arguments as tools to accomplish this justification. Thus, this research presents an analysis to explain and illustrate arguments of statutory interpretation, given that the plain language of legal rules is not always sufficient to give all the answers needed for a legal decision. The theoretical analysis presented here, based on the relevant literature, aims to review some of the main concepts necessary for legal arguments of statutory interpretation and their possible relation to argument schemes. The reviewed arguments schemes advance arguments that avoid absurd results, as well as those that reflect the legislation’s purpose and the legislator’s intention. Overall, this study demonstrates how one can present arguments or evaluate and reconstruct them in the legal field. Specifically, reviewing argument schemes for legal arguments of statutory interpretation can help refine some of the main features of legal argumentation and highlight the necessary interpretation to accomplish them.

Keywords

• legal argumentation
• argumentation theory
• argument schemes
• argumentation
• legal interpretation