ABSTRACT
In most legal systems, reasoning by analogy is prohibited in criminal law (unless it is in favour of the accused) whereas extensive interpretation is not. Hence it is crucial in criminal adjudication to distinguish the two arguments, although they seem to serve the same purpose. The problem however seems to be that it is very unclear whether there is a real difference between the two and where it might lie. Against such confusion an original account of the distinction between analogical reasoning and interpretive extension is proposed, based upon the principle of semantic tolerance and its inferential structure in legal argumentation, with hopefully constructive implications for criminal justice adjudication.
