In Interpretive Conventions, Steven Mailloux examines five influential theories of the reading process—those of Stanley Fish, Jonathan Culler, Wolfgang Iser, Norman Holland, and David Bleich.

With its detailed and wide-ranging explorations in history, philosophy, and law, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how the Constitution ought to be interpreted and what it means to live under a constitutional government."--BOOK JACKET.

Will appeal to scholars, practitioners and general readers engaging with treaty interpretation at all levels and will enhance the reader's knowledge and mastery of the interpretive process. It will shed light on all those relevant elements and/or connections that the traditional rule-based approach to treaty interpretation largely overlooks.

From the Preface: "Contemporary theory has usefully analyzed how alternative modes of interpretation produce different meanings, how reading itself is constituted by the variable perspectives of readers, and how these perspectives are in turn defined by prejudices, ideologies, interests, and so forth. Some theorists gave argued persuasively that textual meaning, in literature and in literary interpretation, is structured by repression and forgetting, by what the literary or critical text does not say as much as by what it does. All these claims are directly relevant to legal hermeneutics, and thus it is no surprise that legal theorists have recently been turning to literary theory for potential insight into the interpretation of law. This collection of essays is designed to represent the especially rich interactive that has taken place between legal and literary hermeneutics during the past ten years."

This handbook provides a comprehensive guide to methods, terms, and concepts used by biblical interpreters. It offers students and non-specialists an accessible resource for understanding the complex vocabulary that accompanies serious biblical studies. Articles, arranged alphabetically, explain terminology associated with reading the Bible as literature, clarify the various methods Bible scholars use to study biblical texts, and illuminate how different interpretive approaches can contribute to our understanding. Article references and topical bibliographies point readers to resources for further study. This handbook, now updated and revised to be even more useful for students, was previously published as Interpreting the Bible: A Handbook of Terms and Methods. It is a suitable complement to any standard hermeneutics textbook.

How do hearers manage to understand speakers? And how do speakers manage to shape hearers' understanding? Lepore and Stone show that standard views about the workings of semantics and pragmatics are unsatisfactory. They advance an alternative view which better captures what is going on in linguistic communication.

The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties makes no express reference to many of the most common canons and interpretative principles derived from international jurisprudence over many years. This volume represents the first modern, freestanding analysis of such canons and principles, their role in treaty interpretation and their relationship with the Vienna Convention regime. A top-flight roster of respected scholars and practitioners of public international law offers an in-depth examination of, among other things: • the origins of canons and interpretive principles; • their utility and limits in treaty interpretation; and • the application of numerous individual canons and interpretive principles, including effet utile, expressio unius, lex specialis, ejusdem generis, in dubio mitius, in pari materia, ex abundante cautela, the principles of contemporaneity and evolutive interpretation, and more. Extensive analysis of case law and scholarship provides insightful interpretive guidance across virtually every subfield of public international law. With its valuable insights into when the application of particular canons or principles of interpretation is most likely to be appropriate and persuasive, the volume will be of great value to lawyers representing parties (whether states, corporations or individuals) before international dispute resolution bodies, as well as to judges and arbitrators, legal officials at ministries of foreign affairs, and scholars of public international law.