On the academic understanding of legal interpretation in Lithuania / Tomas Berkmanas

Abstract

An analysis of the academic understanding of legal interpretation in Lithuania should begin with the transformations that took place over the last fifteen years in the Soviet and post-Soviet region. The transformations involved many spheres of social life, including the law. But the basic structure of these transformations must be understood correctly to rightly assess what went right or wrong with the understanding of legal interpretation in Lithuania. The stereotype is that during the transformation one understanding was changed or, speaking more exactly, another understanding became the preferred understanding.1 In many cases, however, what the transformation really resulted in was a proliferation of understandings in relation to one or another sphere or phenomenon of social life. That was the coming of the spirit of liberalism to this region. The formerly sovietized were de-dogmatized and the world of various ideas, ideologies, conceptions or, generally, understandings opened before them. It is not, however, easy to get rid of a dogmatic mode of thinking. Usually the proliferation was accompanied by a straightforward, even dogmatic, devaluation of the one understanding which had been prevalent in Soviet times