ABSTRACT
The reconstruction of the hermeneutic character of legal construction rests on the intentional character of non-natural meaning. As a hermeneutic discipline, legal construction has to presuppose a preceding communicative intention of an author. The rationality requirements connected with the – mostly implicit – presupposition of a fictive legislator explain not only a series of properties of legal construction but also what characterizes legal construction as a hermeneutic discipline and what distinguishes it from legal interpretation on the one hand and legislation on the other. Legal construction in the form of adjudication creates new law applicable to cases for which the legislator had no intentions; in the form of academic legal doctrine, it works out respective suggestions. Contrary to Hans Kelsen and to similar accounts, legal construction differs from other ways of creating law and specifically from legislation. Unlike any form of legislation, legal construction cannot be justified solely by its political or practical appropriateness.
