L'interpretazione

Over the years, the interpretation of arbitral awards and the relating hermeneutic criteria have been much influenced by the debate as to whether arbitral decisions are in their very nature contractual acts or jurisdictional ones. The meager case law on the matter dates back to the period preceding the reform of 2006 and the introduction of art 824 c.p.c., which equates, as to their effects, arbitral awards with judgements. According to a profuse jurisprudence, that analogy derives from the need to apply to arbitral awards the same interpretative standards used for statutes rather than those applicable to contracts. Moving from a more modern account of party autonomy, according to which a functionalist approach must be preferred, this research inquires as to the needs that hermeneutical activities nowadays have and proposes a unitary conception of both the object of interpretation and the function that interpretation pursues. Such account is aimed at understanding the circularity of the hermeneutical proceeding, not only in a general cognitive perspective, but also with a view to justify a provision on the basis of its inherent rationality. Hence the finding that the social experience of legal relations and the rationality of the paradigm overlap, thereby giving new blood to a general theory of interpretation of law and not only of the texts