Legal meaning derives from practices of legitimation, not truth conditions.

Evidence

The account of meaning in terms of truth conditions has to be replaced by an account of meaning in terms of the conditions under which our practices legitimate our making such statements, including conditions under which the legitimation may be overturned. What legitimates a legal statement does so only in view of the facts of our common practices. This is very much in sympathy with Patterson’s efforts to treat law, jurisprudentially, as a practice. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 386

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the pragmatist account of legal meaning as legitimation-condition-based rather than truth-condition-based.
• XREF: Connects to Wittgenstein’s private language argument and Brandon’s inferentialism about meaning. — connects to: The connective relations among signs are systemic, not private subjective matters.; Text interpretation is a consequence-sensitive act, not a logical exercise. — Richard A. Posner, What Has Pragmatism to Offer Law?, 97; Legal validity derives from normative authority, not from physical power alone. — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 48 (+15 more)

Related

• Legal propositions have truth conditions but defy simple truth valuation. (similarity 0.88)
• Obsessing over what makes legal statements true has misled jurisprudence. (similarity 0.87)
• Dehumanizing discourses need not be true, only resonant, to become law. (similarity 0.85)
• Legal propositions are true only within the practice’s own recognized forms (similarity 0.85)
• Legal processes demand knowledge forms that exclude legitimate ways of knowing (similarity 0.83)
• Legal legitimacy is structural contingency, not shared conviction (similarity 0.83)
• Any external normativity contaminates practice-derived legitimation entirely. (similarity 0.83)
• Legal propositions are true when they invite competent professional assent. (similarity 0.82)
• Constitutional law’s foundational modalities derive legitimacy from use alone, not external validation. (similarity 0.82)
• Legitimacy can be derived from constitutional practices rather than from justifications. (similarity 0.81)
• Legal inductions represent probabilities rather than absolute truths. (similarity 0.81)
• Common law legitimacy derives from published judicial opinions and public reasoning. (similarity 0.80)
• Law lacks fixed major premises unlike math and science (similarity 0.80)
• Identifying valid legal criteria in any system is an empirical question of fact (similarity 0.80)
• Legal major premises derive authority from constitutional text or statutes (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Legal legitimacy is structural contingency, not shared conviction #corroborates (0.82)
• Legal inductions represent probabilities rather than absolute truths. #qualifies (0.60) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 550
• Inductive legal generalization produces workable probabilities rather than absolute truths. #qualifies (0.60) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 339
• Legal processes demand knowledge forms that exclude legitimate ways of knowing #qualifies (0.50) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 547
• Justifying a legal system differs fundamentally from causally explaining it through politics or psychology #expands (0.50) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 181