The Legal Interpretation

People who study, create, apply, and enforce the provisions of law must understand its nature and purpose. The benefit of law is related to its understanding, therefore all legal activities are invariably associated with the interpretation of the legal phenomenon. The importance of legal interpretation is fundamental to legal theory and practice. Interpretation explains the origins, fundamental principles, purposes, and expected results associated with law.

          Law cannot exist in isolation from interpretive activity. A student who collects legal knowledge in his memory without making sense of it and understanding it is wasting his time. The legislator who creates a bill without thoroughly considering the specifics and needs of public interactions (the object of the legislation) creates a useless, often even harmful legal framework. A practicing lawyer who refers to a legal act without understanding its essence and practical purpose is very often wrong. A citizen who is forced to comply with legal prescriptions without understanding their essence and useful purpose will always look for a way to circumvent or violate them. At the heart of any activity related to legal phenomena is legal interpretation.

          Law – interpretation – understanding. Whether you study, create, apply or execute – law is always related to interpretation in order to be understood.

          Interpretation evaluates based on knowledge and creates an interpretive result based on thought, therefore it is defined as a cognitive-mental activity. To recognize the peculiarities of the facts in order to relate them in the most appropriate way to the law and its consequences – this is the challenge facing the lawyer. An activity that at first glance is so simple and easily achievable, but in fact is so complex and difficult. The latter circumstance is derived from the need for the interpretative result to be tied to reason and justice, in order to imply clarity, predictability, stability and normality in the implementation of social interactions.

          What does legal interpretation actually mean? Is it significant for the quality of the legal phenomenon? How is it carried out? What are its features? Can law exist and legal reality function as intended without interpretation? At first glance, the above questions are rhetorical, but the problems in the Bulgarian legal reality, the neglect of the quality and results of interpretative activity, the increasingly aggressive application of artificial intelligence, as well as the lack of comprehensive jurisprudence research in the field of interpretation, suggest the development of more scientific works in this area.

          The present work is intended to respond to some of the listed challenges by emphasizing the cognitive and intellectual nature of interpretive activity. Based on the cognitive nature of interpretation, an attempt will be made to justify the need to consider the activity from a new perspective, namely from the place of lawmaking. Thought activity, also part of the interpretive essence, will be examined as a means of solving many contemporary problems, for example in the field of discrimination. Of course, the two main components of the interpretative activity will be examined in their interdependence through the use of the different ways of carrying out legal interpretation.

          The work is aimed at law students, researchers, teachers and legal practitioners. An attempt will be made to present interpretation as a creative activity aimed at legal acts and law as a social phenomenon.

          If we want a healthy and prosperous society, developing within the framework of a strong rule of law, we must constantly strive to understand the reality of life in order to understand the creation of just and working law. This implies continuous interpretation, carried out by everyone involved in law.

To be a lawyer – means to be able to interpret the law!