Oor hoe juriste werk met tekste ... en tekste met hulle - Enkele gedagtes oor die postmodernisering van Christelik-reformatoriese regsdenke

Abstract

On how jurists work with texts ... and texts with them. Some thoughts on postmodemising Christian-Reformational legal thinking. In this article it is argued that postmodern, Christian-Reformational legal scholarship is possible, in principle, and indeed necessary. Reformational legal scholars are enjoined to account for the implications of the linguistic turn in legal interpretation, namely that meaning is not discovered in a text, but is made in dealing with the text. The meaning of “text” in the light of postmodern insights that traverse the notion of law-texts as autonomous bearers of meaning, is compared with traditional lexicographic notions of the signifier “text". According to the former insights a law-text is a signifier whose possible meanings in specific situations are generated as a result of a dynamic and complex interplay between the text and multifarious other signifiers. A basic distinction is made between narrative and normative lawtexts and the relevance of this distinction is explained.