Interpreting Law and the General Principles of the Legal Order

Emilio Betti’s Defense of the “Perennial Task” of the Jurist-Legal Scholar

Abstract

The author analyzes the short essay in which Emilio Betti, in 1943, takes a position on Minister Grandi’s proposal to establish by law the “general principles of the fascist legal order”. Betti raises strong reservations about this, arguing that general principles of this kind cannot be laid down in binding legal rules and that their identification and development belong to the interpretive work of jurists-legal scholars. The concise arguments put forward in the essay are later taken up and extensively developed by Betti in his fundamental General Theory of Interpretation, published in 1955, in the section devoted to legal interpretation. By comparing the two writings, the author of the present essay notes the clear derivation of the latter from the former and their substantial coherence.