Between the text and the discourse : a few remarks on the subject of communicative competence within the texts of legal acts

The subject of legal interpretation is the text of a legal act as the source of law. Adequately ascertaining the substantive contents of the law therefore requires knowledge of the intrinsic characteristics of the act of law as a form of normatively defined mode of utterance. Due to the high level of conventionalization of the texts of acts of law, their interpretation requires specialized knowledge of legal interpretation of the texts of law, which may be classified as legal communicative competence. Because this competence characterises individuals who are professionally prepared to interpret acts of law, and at the same time who function in a given community of discourse, it is in essence a type of discursive competence within the law.