Abstract

The emphasis that has been put by Hermeneutics on the role of the interpreter should be mitigated, at the prescriptive level, by the principles that rule the interpretative process in criminal law and that exclude judicial decisions as a source of law. This is true for the reasoning by analogy and the prohibition to go beyond the text in criminal law. From the point of view of the politics of law, according to the author, the tenets of Hermeneutics are not reasons for rebuilding the principles of modern criminal law but reasons for a strong defence of the submission to law, which impede to give precedent a formal legal bindingness.