法律方法、法的安定性與法治

Legal Methods, Legal Certainty and the Rule of Law

法律方法面臨的主要挑戰之一在於它可能破壞法的安定性，而後者是法治的核心之一。司法裁判首先是一種“依法裁判”，在這一領域中，法的安定性涉及制定法規則在“規範上可能的適用範圍”。雖然這種適用範圍在法律解釋和法律續造的情形中都不明確，但是，一方面，法律規則的文義界限、受理性程序性規則導控的商談、遵循先例與教義學的法律論證、對特定法律解釋方法及其順序的遵循，以及對憲法秩序要求的符合，大大壓縮了裁量的空間，很大程度上確保了法律解釋過程中法的安定性；另一方面，在法律續造過程中，法的安定性必須在權衡過程中被顧及，也在論證負擔和碰撞法則中發揮作用，這又在很大程度上抵銷了因逾越文義而帶來的安定性損失。因此，法律方法具有滿足“法的最大化安定性”的可能，法治也有實現的可能。我們在繼受法律方法學說的過程中，不能將它與其背後的價值論割裂開來。

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.