法律方法、法的安定性与法治

Legal Methods,Legal Certainty and the Rule of Law

法律方法面临的主要挑战之一在于它可能破坏法的安定性,而后者是法治的核心之一。司法裁判首先是一种"依法裁判",在这一领域中,法的安定性涉及制定法规则在"规范上可能的适用范围"。虽然这种适用范围在法律解释和法律续造的情形中都不明确,但是,一方面,法律规则的文义界限、受理性程序性规则导控的商谈、遵循先例与教义学的法律论证、对特定法律解释方法及其顺序的遵循,以及对宪法秩序要求的符合,大大压缩了裁量的空间,很大程度上确保了法律解释过程中法的安定性;另一方面,在法律续造过程中,法的安定性必须在权衡过程中被顾及,也在论证负担和碰撞法则中发挥作用,这又在很大程度上抵销了因逾越文义而带来的安定性损失。因此,法律方法具有满足"法的最大化安定性"的可能,法治也有实现的可能。我们在继受法律方法学说的过程中,不能将它与其背后的价值论割裂开来。

One of the main challenges to legal methods is that it will destroy legal certainty,which constitutes the core of the rule of law.Judicial decision is above all ' decision according to law',and legal certainty in this respect is concerned with 'range of normatively possible application'.Though this range of application in legal interpretation and in case of continued legal making are both indeterminate,yet,on one side,the wording of legal rules,the discourse regulated by rational procedural rules,legal argumentation through stare decisis and dogmatics,adherence to special interpretative means of law and their rank,and compliance with demand from constitutional order all greatly reduce the discretionary space of judge;and on the other hand,in the process of continuous legal making,legal certainty must be considered in balance,and it also plays a role in burden of argumentation and rule of collision,which in turn offsets largely the lose of certainty caused by overcoming the wording of legal text.There exists the possibility for legal methods to satisfy the ' maximum certainty in law',and thus there is also possibility to achieve the rule of law.The theory of legal methods cannot be separated from the value theory behind it in the process of transplantation from aboard.