@article{2022:pirker:five_shade,
title = {Five Shades of Grey – A Linguistic and Pragmatic Approach to Treaty Interpretation},
year = {2022},
note = {In the context of treaty interpretation, new insights from research on
language meaning (semantics and pragmatics) offer possibilities for
categorising meaning with increased precision. Based on a typology of
pragmatic interpretations, the present paper develops a five-step
system of categorisation for the grey area ranging from cases where a
treaty seems to be silent to cases where the Vienna Convention’s
general rule on interpretation can still be applied because there is
treaty text to be interpreted. The paper explains the typology and
uses examples from international law to demonstrate its usefulness in
dealing with situations of varying degrees of explicitness of treaty
texts. While pragmatics cannot offer a miracle solution, it provides
tests that interpreting agents can apply to categorise interpretations
on the continuum between clear ordinary meaning cases and cases of
treaty silence. It thereby also becomes clearer what exact arguments
an interpreting agent needs to provide to bolster a particular
interpretation as sufficiently related to the common intentions of the
treaty parties.},
journal = {Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht / Heidelberg Journal of International Law},
pages = {121--158},
author = {Pirker, Benedikt and Smolka, Jennifer},
volume = {82},
number = {1}
}