This chapter begins, in section 2, by canvassing different accounts of what legal interpretation is. Section 3 sketches leading theories or methods of legal interpretation. Section 4 explores a few of these methods, especially intentionalism and textualism (including original meaning originalism), in much greater detail and examines difficulties they encounter. Several distinctions are introduced that enable more precise analysis than the characterizations generally offered in the literature. Section 5 turns to the question of how to defend and evaluate theories of legal interpretation. It concludes with a brief discussion of various kinds of idealization in the theory of legal interpretation.