ABSTRACT
Globalization processes attest to foreign law’s increasing relevance. Consider how the US Supreme Court, one of the most influential interpreters in the legal world, has been referring to foreign law in high-profile decisions regarding the meaning of the US Constitution. This chapter follows the critical appreciation of the relevance of Gadamer’s model to the interpretation of foreign law. It discusses Hans Georg Gadamer’s approach to legal hermeneutics. Overall, Gadamer’s philosophical project aims to explore and explain the modalities under which understanding occurs. In Truth and Method, Gadamer expresses his position pointedly: work is not to develop a procedure of understanding, but to clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place’. Although Gadamer argues that language is ‘the medium of understanding’, it appears that language is at the same time an obstacleto understanding, in particular in the intercultural context. In other words, ‘the medium of understanding’ is in effect a medium of misunderstanding, the relation a disrelation.
