Hermeneutical Methods in the Study of Legal Matter: A Semiotic–Legal Interpretation

The article examines hermeneutical methods of cognizing legal matter as an intellectual and methodological tool for revealing the content of legal norms and the semantic nature of law. Hermeneutics is considered not merely as a technique for interpreting legal texts, but as a comprehensive philosophical approach to understanding law within its cultural, historical, and socio-normative contexts. Particular attention is devoted to the dynamic relationship between the letter and the spirit of the law, the dialogical nature of legal interpretation, and the active role of the interpreting subject in shaping and concretizing legal meaning. Established that hermeneutical method transforms legal science from a system of rules into a system of meanings (systema signification). Its key functions can be summarized as follows: critical function – freeing interpretation from the dogmatism of positivism; law is not reducible to text but requires living understanding; integration function – harmonizing national and European law through a dialogue of values and contexts; heuristic function – discovering new semantic horizons in lawmaking, where the statute becomes a product of collective understanding rather than mere political will. The study also highlights how hermeneutical reasoning transforms law from a strictly formal system of rules into a living communicative space in which meaning emerges through the interaction between the statute, the judge, legal practitioners, and society as a whole. It is argued that hermeneutical methodology provides an essential foundation for contemporary theories of legal understanding and contributes to the development of more coherent, value-oriented, and context-sensitive practices of law application.