Argumentation Schemes for Statutory Interpretation

In this paper it is shown how defeasible argumentation schemes can be used to represent the logical structure of the thirteen types of ar- guments recognized as important for statutory interpretation by (Tarello 1980). It is shown that the process of statutory interpretation has a distinctive argumentative structure where the conclusion, namely, the meaning attributed to a legal source, is a claim that needs to be sup- ported by pro and contra defeasible arguments. This transformation of the arguments of interpretation into the argumentation schemes frame- work is applied to the psychological and the a contrario arguments, as leading examples to follow. The defeasible nature of each scheme is shown by means of critical questions, which identify the default conditions for the accepting interpretative arguments and provide a method for evalu- ating a given argument as weak or strong.

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