{"id":24421,"date":"2026-06-12T10:57:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=24421"},"modified":"2026-07-02T11:57:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:57:04","slug":"the-object-of-interpretation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-114\/volume-114-issue-4-april-2026\/the-object-of-interpretation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Object of Interpretation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><i>This Article provides an account of the object of legal interpretation. It <\/i><i>examines various potential objects: text, lawmaking choice, practice, and <\/i><i>order. The Article argues for a pluralist conception of the object of interpre<\/i><i>tation, according to which all of these alternatives are possible objects. In <\/i><i>making this argument, the Article puts forth an account of the nature of the <\/i><i>object of interpretation. The object of legal interpretation is, in essence, what <\/i><i>is treated as a source of law<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u2014<\/span><i>a fact that is recognized as generating law. As <\/i><i>such, which alternative is exactly the object of interpretation in a given con<\/i><i>text depends partly on descriptive considerations regarding what the law <\/i><i>treats as a legal source and how it does so, and partly on normative ones <\/i><i>regarding which object of interpretation officials should choose.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>This account has several consequences. No object of interpretation is <\/i><i>self-evident, not even the text. Further, there is no single <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>correct<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>object of <\/i><i>interpretation. Pluralism is inevitable, as it is always possible for legal <\/i><i>practice and practitioners to treat different things as the object of interpre<\/i><i>tation. Legal systems and individual interpreters need, in a very real sense, <\/i><i>to choose an object of interpretation. Since all interpretation depends on its <\/i><i>object, any proposal for a method of interpretation must first define what is <\/i><i>being interpreted.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2026\/06\/Urbina_The-Object-of-Interpretation.pdf\"><strong><em>The Object of Interpretation<\/em><\/strong><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-pdfemb-pdf-embedder-viewer\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2026\/06\/Urbina_The-Object-of-Interpretation.pdf\" class=\"pdfemb-viewer\" style=\"\" data-width=\"max\" data-height=\"max\" data-toolbar=\"bottom\" data-toolbar-fixed=\"off\">Urbina_The-Object-of-Interpretation<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Article provides an account of the object of legal interpretation. It examines various potential objects: text, lawmaking choice, practice, and order. The Article argues for a pluralist conception of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13871,"featured_media":0,"parent":24413,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-24421","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24596,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24421\/revisions\/24596"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}