Abstract

This forum discusses some of the key issues that Giuseppe Zaccaria addresses in his book "La comprensione del diritto". It is frequently claimed by legal scholars that contemporary law is undergoing a thorough change affecting the ways in which law organizes and governs human conduct. In the face of this change, a new broad understanding of law seems to be needed, to which end Zaccaria's book offers some valuable insights. According to Zaccaria, the contemporary evolution of law can be accounted for by looking at the role of interpretation in legal practice, as suggested by the tradition of legal hermeneutics. Furthermore, legal interpretation gives access to the nature of law: law can be seen as a set of interpretive practices that mediate between facts and norms, rights and interests, principles and policies. The contributors to this forum discuss these and other related issues. In particular, the forum focuses on the characteristics of practical knowledge according to legal hermeneutics, on the relationship between judge-made law and neoconstitutionalism, on the reception of legal hermeneutics by criminal law scholars, and on the relation between legal hermeneutics and Italian legal realism.