Abstract

This article aims at evaluating the contribution of the New Realism to legal science and to compare it to the Hermeneutic approach in three points. The first one highlights the position of Hermeneutic against the thesis of the reduction of facts to interpretation. From this point of view, New Realism and Hermeneutic share the idea that not everything is interpretation. The second one studies the resistance of reality to interpretation as a tool for reducing the risk of arbitrary interpretations, according to a sort of negative realism: it is difficult to build a correct interpretation, but it is possible to establish that some of them are certainly incorrect. The third one regards the peculiarity of law as a social object, in tension between facts and norms, «is» and «ought». From this point of view, the Hermeneutic approach is characterized by its combining constructivism and realism.