Integrating Normative Coherence into Judicial Hermeneutics through the Neutrosophic Hierarchical Analytic Process: An Ethical Approach to Justice

Abstract

This article answers the need to ensure normative coherence in hermeneutics exercised by judges and aims to investigate how a judge's decision can be in line with ethical justice values and formal justice values when uncertainty is concerned. This article is significant and timely because the current state of globalized legal systems calls for judges who can render the expected outcome but also an application of law that supports ethical justice values to enhance the legitimacy of any judicial system and community confidence in authority. While other scholarly contributions to the field of legal hermeneutics—from Vigo—credit a great deal to the value of ethics and coherence, rarely is there a comprehensive approach that applies a formalized process to control for uncertainty when exercising legal hermeneutics. Thus, this article applies the Neutrosophic Analytic Hierarchy Process (NAHP)—a formalized decision-making process that accounts for indeterminacy in addition to truth and falsity. Ultimately, findings show that judges can use NAHP to give weighted importance to ethical values because the process provides coherent results with existing normative systems yet remains sensitive to socioeconomic legal factors. This article adds to the body of knowledge theoretically through legal hermeneutics based on a formalized approach to ethical decision-making. Furthermore, practically it shows judges a way to ensure their decisions are consistent with substantive justice for the better good of equity and social integration even when the legal system is inherently uncertain at times.