Superfluum and surpluses of meaning as examples of redundancy of the text of law

Keywords: superfluum, meaning of the legal text, surpluses of meaning, intentionality

English abstract: The subject of the paper is the notion of redundancy, which in the text of law may be perceived both from systemic point of view and linguistic perspective. Within systemic
standpoint, the paper focuses on superfluum issue, which occurs when one provision is repeated by another legal provision (full superfluum) and when part of one provision becomes „new” provision (or its part) in the same or another legal text (partial superfluum). These manifestations of systemic redundancy are not always results of legislative mistakes (as might be noticed during analysis of selected examples of superfluum derived from Polish legal texts), but the evaluation of each case of superfluum depends on criterions, which in Polish legal system are incomplete and imprecise. In the second part, the paper discusses one kind of linguistic redundancy – semantic redundancy, which appears in pleonasms, tautologies and pleonastic analytisms. It is argued here, in contrary to majority of previous descriptions of semantic redundancy phenomenon presented in linguistics and legal theory, that some redundant expressions may be useful during interpretation of legal provisions, because in certain circumstances they may have pragmatic values. These values are: enhancing meaning, specifying meaning and explicating meaning. Furthermore, in some cases aforementioned pragmatic values may be reached by context-independent redundant expressions, what has been shown basing on examples from Polish legal texts.