CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Johnson, Christina Ray |
|---|---|
| Title | The Defense of Legal Pragmatism for Interpreting Constitutional and Statutory Laws in Virtue of Technology |
| Summary | This thesis discusses the interpretation of constitutional and statutory laws, with emphasis on those laws that protect the rights of individuals in the U.S. My concern is that today technology is created and innovated at a fast pace and on a large scale; it has great impact on society, with the problematic aspect that it can infringe upon individuals‟ rights. Laws can be written to help with this problem, but when a case that has to do with technology that has not yet been accounted for in legal texts is taken to court, judges are left with a challenge. They have to interpret existing laws in regard to technology, and depending on the method they use these judges may seemingly create laws. This is against the idea that in democracy and the separation of powers, judges are not included in the branch that legislates. Still, judges cannot leave the problem of interpretation for the sake of technology alone, and they must alter the legal texts in some way. In this thesis I wish to answer this question: is it defensible for the judicial branch to expand the meaning of the words written in legal texts through their interpretations while still upholding democracy? My answer is yes, it is defensible when using the method of legal pragmatism, because it allows for modern circumstances to be accommodated while still keeping faith to the original legal texts written by legislators. |
| Supervisor | Weberman, David |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/johnson_christina.pdf |
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