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I don't think this is a special feature of EU law. Legal judgments in other places also rely on the intent of a law to clarify potentially ambiguous text.
by TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
I don't think this is a special feature of EU law. Legal judgments in other places also rely on the intent of a law to clarify potentially ambiguous text.
- zarzavat 2y agoThe special feature is that EU laws are written in so many different languages that a textual interpretation is not only not preferred, but completely impossible. US law places a moderate degree of emphasis on textualism in statutory interpretation, at least for a Common Law jurisdiction. Even the word “textualism” comes from the US. It’s somewhat common for courts in the US courts to pull out a copy of Webster’s dictionary in order to interpret a statue, that kind of thing rarely happens in English law. There are definitely some jurisdictions within the EU that place a much higher degree of emphasis on the text of a law than the US does, in their domestic legal systems, e.g. Germany. So I don’t think it’s the case that US companies are unprepared to deal with a legal system that is based on intention compared to EU companies.