El arte del derecho

Abstract

My aim is not to repeat the traditional question ¿what is law? but ¿how law is executed?. We have to consider that man’s life develops inside a “cultural world”, and culture is related to interpretative activity.

It is possible to establish a parallelism between two apparently different subjects like music (and arts in general) and law. Certainly the flexibility of the legal situations gives us the possibility to affirm that law interpretation is related mostly to art than to science.

In the same way that legal activity needs interpretation to adequate norms to facts, in the field of music –and arts in general- is not possible to avoid the influence of the performer’s sensibility.

We have to understand law as a complex object inside a cultural reality, and it means to find out the way to concrete the interpretation process. It’s not casualty that modernist movements from the end of the19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century found a relationship between art and science, and both together tried to present a new perspective of man’s life.

Interpretation means not only to stand in front of the object and to find out a method, but it supposes a decision, a selection and acceptation –or not- of the interpretative result.

Interpretative activity is necessary to “know” law, because interpretation is part of law reality: we are building the object when we know it.

 Interpretation is selection and decision. It’s an activity based on a value act, influenced by the world’s conception of the interpreter, and finally, by his sensibility.