Philosophy of Law: Between the Letter and the Spirit and Judicial Wisdom

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the foundations of jurisprudence, focusing on the tension between the literal meaning of legal provisions and their deeper ethical meaning. The author invokes the Aristotelian concept of phronesis as a key to understanding judicial prudence in the face of so-called hard cases. The text juxtaposes the classical theories of Ronald Dworkin, H.L.A. Hart, and Lon Fuller with contemporary challenges such as scoring systems and artificial intelligence algorithms. The analysis also encompasses the psychological aspects of adjudication, including the impact of cognitive heuristics and bounded rationality on the process of applying the law. The overall analysis presents law not as a rigid set of rules but as a living system requiring integrity, wisdom, and justice in a dynamically changing socio-technological environment.