📖 ABSTRACT/OVERVIEW
This study develops a contextual legal philosophy for Nigeria, grounded in philosophical hermeneutics, by analysing how judges and legal scholars interpret constitutional and statutory texts in ways that either ignore or engage with the distinctive Nigerian social and philosophical context. Philosophical hermeneutics, from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and African philosophical hermeneutics, provides tools for understanding interpretation as always situated within a tradition and pre-understanding, and its application to Nigerian legal interpretation fills a significant gap in the legal philosophy literature. A mixed-methods philosophical design is employed, combining systematic philosophical analysis of hermeneutical theory with a qualitative analysis of 50 selected Supreme Court and Court of Appeal constitutional decisions from 2019 to 2023, supplemented by 35 interviews with constitutional scholars, legal philosophers, and senior advocates in Lagos and Abuja. Findings reveal that Nigerian judicial interpretation is dominated by a formalist hermeneutical approach derived from English common law tradition that inadequately accounts for the Nigerian constitutional tradition's distinctive blend of federal, customary, and rights-based legal sources. The study argues that a contextual hermeneutical philosophy, sensitive to the Nigerian pre-understanding embedded in its plural legal traditions, would produce more socially appropriate and democratically legitimate constitutional interpretations. Keywords: philosophical hermeneutics, legal interpretation, Nigerian constitution, Gadamer, contextual legal philosophy.
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