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The primary content-related framework we are bound to are the basic human rights as established in the constitution. These basic rights may change and develop, yet as the heritage of our political and legal culture, they possess such a solid core meaning that only a "dogmatic sceptic" (G. Radbruch) can doubt it. In societies with plural values, the moral values expressed by the basic human rights are the most solid moral basis of law. The moral understanding of law is necessarily accompanied by a moral criticism of law. Such criticism is often not pleasing to the authorities, but it cannot be avoided if one wants to live up to our responsibility towards nature, society and future generations. A lawyer who is not interested in these issues and only sticks to the letter of the law acts in a fossilized manner and does not enrich the life that the law is intended for. Legal thought should always have its meaning, as Smole's Antigone would say.

In the context of a normative concretisation of the statute, the term "statute" is not synonymous with the law that can be repeated in light of a concrete case. In this context, the interpreter is the one who (1) "reconstructs" the possibilities contained in the statute, (2) articulates more precisely the contents of these possibilities, and (3) chooses the combination of possibilities that corresponds most closely to the legally relevant features of the life case (which also must be interpreted). Thus the interpreter's productivity consists in recognizing a legal provision as referring to a type of conduct − for example, as recognizing that the statutory signs "exceeding the speed limit" refer to, inter alia, a type of behaviour known as driving a car too fast through a town. Moreover, the decision-maker has decided the case just this way, which means it is the decision-maker and not the "statutory text" that has excluded the possibility of any other legal solution (e. g. of driving too fast in a state of emergency). The statute refers to cases that will only occur in the future and are at the present moment, in a more or less defined way, envisaged by the legislator. Irrespective of the extent and intensiveness of the envisaging, the interpretation must remain true to the core meaning of the norm and to the semantic possibilities of the statute text.

Zsfassungen in engl. Sprache. - Bibliogr. S. Cigoj S. 147 - 174