ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on legal hermeneutics in Truth and Method is indeed to be found in a section titled ‘The recovery of the fundamental hermeneutical problem’. Hans-Georg Gadamer opposes here two views: first, the idea that hermeneutics would have to be or to provide a methodology of this nature; second, the notion that the implication of the observer is always a bad thing. Emilio Betti was clearly a central source of inspiration in prompting Gadamer’s interest in legal hermeneutics, even though Betti himself did not regard legal hermeneutics as an exemplary discipline for all hermeneutics. In the decisive chapter on legal hermeneutics of Truth and Method, Gadamer takes up Betti’s distinction of three types of interpretation: cognitive, normative and reproductive. Legal hermeneutics, especially as it is accomplished from the position of a judge, provides a prime illustration of the productive interplay of past and present which constitutes effective history or Wirkungsgeschichte.
