Legal Foundations for Interpreting Criminal Texts: A Study of Jordanian Criminal Legislation

Abstract

Interpretation plays a crucial and influential role in formulating criminal law. This role is almost as important as the role of legislation itself. Interpretation of criminal texts is achieved by moving from the apparent meaning to the implicit meaning. This means arriving at an understanding of the meanings of the texts and applying them correctly. This is achieved through the judge's interpretation of reality, the law, and the rules of justice.

This study aims to demonstrate the legal controls that must be considered when interpreting a criminal text, thereby arriving at the correct legal description and incorporating it into the ruling. This was achieved by shedding light on the subject of the limits of the criminal judge's authority in interpreting texts that are shrouded in ambiguity and obscurity within legislative formulations.

The study of this topic requires following the descriptive applied approach specific to the topic of criminal interpretation in the Jordanian Code of Criminal Procedure No. (23) of 1961 and its amendments to answer the study's problem and questions.

In conclusion, the study reaches several conclusions, the most important of which is that the scope of interpretation is limited to speculative texts whose wording is open to interpretation due to the presence of clear evidence that diverts the apparent meaning to a non-apparent one. The study also recommended adding the phrase "speculative texts" to the text of Articles 274 and 280/2 of the Penal Code, following the phrase "error in interpretation," to exclude definitive texts from interpretation.