Intención, contratos e interpretación de textos jurídicos indeterminados

Abstract

The paper analyzes the intentionalist thesis as a solution to indeterminacy's problems in legal interpretation. The inquiry focuses on the indeterminacy that arises from two features of language, i.e. vagueness and open texture. In these cases, according to the intentionalist thesis, the interpreter must look for the intention of the author of the text. To avoid certain objections to the thesis, but also to show its limits, the paper analyzes how the thesis works in the case of the interpretation of contracts and shows that the intention cannot solve problems of vagueness, even though it seems to be useful to solve problems of open texture. Nevertheless, the last section explores the difficulties that must be faced when identifying the intention of the author and comes to the conclusion that in the end the intention cannot solve, in a definitive way, problems of indeterminacy.