At Legal Theory Blog, Larry Solum has posted an entry in his Legal Theory Lexicon: Context and Meaning. From the introduction:
One of the most important tasks performed by lawyers and judges is the "interpretation" of legal texts, including constitutions, statutes, regulations, rules, contracts, and the list goes on. One aspect of communication involves the linguistic meaning the words and phrases that make up the text: this aspect of meaning is sometimes called "semantics." The bare semantic meaning of a legal text is sometimes called the "literal meaning." But the whole meaning of a text almost always is richer than the literal meaning. We might ask, "Where does the 'extra' meaning come from?" The answer to that question is context. The role of context in the production of meanings is called "pragmatics" by philosophers of language and linguistic theorists.
And from an important later part:
Context plays another important role in the production of meaning. A legal text can communicate an idea without stating the idea explicitly. Context can "enrich" or add to the literal meaning of a text. This is a deep topic, but one way to approach it is by cataloging some of the forms of what is called "pragmatic enrichment."
Under this topic the post discusses "implicature," "impliciture," "presupposition," and "modulation."
None of this is inconsistent with a textualist approach to interpretation. As Professor Solum says later: "Textualists are concerned with the meaning of the statutory text: they look to context in order to determine the content communicated by the text of the statute." It's sometimes said that textualists should not look at context, but that's wrong. They look at context to determine textual meaning; the key is that they don't look to context to go beyond (or against) the textual meaning.
Posted at 6:44 AM