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🪵 The Threshold

Obsessing over what makes legal statements true has misled jurisprudence.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, seed, xref, contrarian_or_surprising, primary_study, singleton, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@bobbitt_reflections_1994, loc. 378

3 min read

Obsessing over what makes legal statements true has misled jurisprudence.

Evidence

I think, ironically, that it has been a concentration on what renders a legal statement true that has misled us. We think that an understanding of a legal statement must consist in a grasp of what would make it true and that such a grasp must consist in a knowledge of how we could recognize that condition as obtaining. And therefore it is also widely held that only by having a conclusive recognition that the condition obtained could we give meaning to the statement itself, but this I deny. My account of how a proposition acquires meaning differs from the standard account, which is shared by all these schools, so that problems of indeterminacy, authoritativeness, et cetera, do not have the same significance for me that they do for the schools of thought mentioned above. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 378

Categorization

  • SEED: An essay contrasting truth-conditional theories of legal meaning with practice-based accounts — the misdirection of asking what would make a legal proposition ‘true’ versus exploring how it functions.
  • XREF: Echoes the truth-conditional vs. use-based theory of meaning in late-Wittgenstein and pragmatist philosophy of language being applied to law. — connects to: Concepts of law and legal obligation must stay until shown illusory — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 17; Legal meaning derives from practices of legitimation, not truth conditions. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 386; Legal nominalists treat law and obligation as myths to be discarded — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 11

Broader Connections

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