Interpretation
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction This Lexicon entry provides an introduction to the distinction between semantics and pragmatics–ideas that play a fundamental role in theoretical linguistics and the philosophy of language. Although the terminology is unfamiliar to many lawyers, the basic idea behind the distinction is fundamentally important to theories about the interpretation and construction
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction Law students soon learn that the interpretation of legal texts is one of the most important things that lawyers and judges do. In a previous Legal Theory Lexicon entry, a distinction was made between “interpretation” and “construction.” Although we could use other words to express the distinction, it expresses an important conceptual
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction This week the Legal Theory Lexicon entry focuses on “ambiguity” and “vagueness”–two important concepts for the theory of interpretation. Some legal texts are ambiguous–they contain words or phrases that can have two or more distinct meanings. And some legal texts are vague–they use concepts that have indefinite application to particular cases. And
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction This entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon is a bit unusual. Rather than explicating concepts that are important to legal theory, the point of this post is to debunk two concepts that sometimes seem to have very little content as used in popular discourse. A case can be made for
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By Lawrence B. Solum Introduction One of the most important topics in legal theory is “legal interpretation,” which deals with the derivation of meaning from legal texts. Of course, legal interpretation is a very large topic, with several different dimensions and approaches. This post will focus on “textualism,” and provide some introductory ideas about interpretive