The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law
Author: Hrafn Asgeirsson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-04-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509904441

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Lawmaking is – paradigmatically – a type of speech act: people make law by saying things. It is natural to think, therefore, that the content of the law is determined by what lawmakers communicate. However, what they communicate is sometimes vague and, even when it is clear, the content itself is sometimes vague. This monograph examines the nature and consequences of these two linguistic sources of indeterminacy in the law. The aim is to give plausible answers to three related questions: In virtue of what is the law vague? What might be good about vague law? How should courts resolve cases of vagueness? It argues that vagueness in the law is sometimes a good thing, although its value should not be overestimated. It also proposes a strategy for resolving borderline cases, arguing that textualism and intentionalism – two leading theories of legal interpretation – often complement rather than compete with each other.

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law
Author: Hrafn Ásgeirsson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781474202756

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1. Authority, Communication and Legal Content -- 2. On the Instrumental Value of Vagueness in the Law -- 3. Vagueness and Power Delegation in Law -- 4. Vagueness, Uncertainty and Behaviour -- 5. On the Possibility of Non-literal Legislative Speech -- 6. Textualism, Content and Interpretation -- 7. Resolving Cases of Vagueness -- 8. Legal Practice and Theories of Vagueness.

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law

The Nature and Value of Vagueness in the Law
Author: Hrafn Asgeirsson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2020-04-10
Genre: Law
ISBN: 150990445X

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Lawmaking is – paradigmatically – a type of speech act: people make law by saying things. It is natural to think, therefore, that the content of the law is determined by what lawmakers communicate. However, what they communicate is sometimes vague and, even when it is clear, the content itself is sometimes vague. This monograph examines the nature and consequences of these two linguistic sources of indeterminacy in the law. The aim is to give plausible answers to three related questions: In virtue of what is the law vague? What might be good about vague law? How should courts resolve cases of vagueness? It argues that vagueness in the law is sometimes a good thing, although its value should not be overestimated. It also proposes a strategy for resolving borderline cases, arguing that textualism and intentionalism – two leading theories of legal interpretation – often complement rather than compete with each other.

Vagueness and Law

Vagueness and Law
Author: Geert Keil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198782888

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Vague expressions are omnipresent in natural language. As such, their use in legal texts is virtually inevitable. If a law contains vague terms, the question whether it applies to a particular case often lacks a clear answer. One of the fundamental pillars of the rule of law is legal certainty. The determinacy of the law enables people to use it as a guide and places judges in the position to decide impartially. Vagueness poses a threat to these ideals. In borderline cases, the law seems to be indeterminate and thus incapable of serving its core rule of law value. In the philosophy of language, vagueness has become one of the hottest topics of the last two decades. Linguists and philosophers have investigated what distinguishes "soritical" vagueness from other kinds of linguistic indeterminacy, such as ambiguity, generality, open texture, and family resemblance concepts. There is a vast literature that discusses the logical, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic aspects of these phenomena. Legal theory has hitherto paid little attention to the differences between the various kinds of linguistic indeterminacy that are grouped under the heading of "vagueness", let alone to the various theories that try to account for these phenomena. Bringing together leading scholars working on the topic of vagueness in philosophy and in law, this book fosters a dialogue between philosophers and legal scholars by examining how philosophers conceive vagueness in law from their theoretical perspective and how legal theorists make use of philosophical theories of vagueness. The chapters of the book are organized into three parts. The first part addresses the import of different theories of vagueness for the law, referring to a wide range of theories from supervaluationist to contextualist and semantic realist accounts in order to address the question of whether the law can learn from engaging with philosophical discussions of vagueness. The second part of the book examines different vagueness phenomena. The contributions in part 2 suggest that the greater awareness to different vagueness phenomena can make lawyers aware of specific issues and solutions so far overlooked. The third part deals with the pragmatic aspects of vagueness in law, providing answers to the question of how to deal with vagueness in law and with the professional, political, moral, and ethical issues such vagueness gives rise to.

Vagueness

Vagueness
Author: Kit Fine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197514952

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"The book is about the problem of vagueness. It begins by discussing some of the existing views on vagueness and then explains why they have not been thought to be satisfactory. It then outlines a new account of vagueness, based upon the general idea that vagueness is a global rather than a local phenomenon.. In other words, the vagueness of an expression or object is not an intrinsic feature of the object or an expression but a matter of how it relates to other objects and expression. The development of this idea leads to a new semantics and logic for vagueness. The semantics and logic are then applied to a number of issues, including the sorites paradox, the transparency of mental states, and personal identity. It is shown that the view allows one to hew to a much more intuitive position on these various issues"--

Vagueness

Vagueness
Author: Timothy Williamson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002-01-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134770189

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If you keep removing single grains of sand from a heap, when is it no longer a heap? From discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece, to modern formal approaches like fuzzy logic, Timothy Williamson traces the history of the problem of vagueness. He argues that standard logic and formal semantics apply even to vague languages and defends the controversial, realist view that vagueness is a form of ignorance - there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we can never know exactly which one it is.

Natural Law and the Nature of Law

Natural Law and the Nature of Law
Author: Jonathan Crowe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2019-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108498302

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Presents a systematic, contemporary defence of the natural law outlook in ethics, politics and jurisprudence.

Vagueness in Psychiatry

Vagueness in Psychiatry
Author: Geert Keil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2017
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0198722370

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Blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in almost every publication concerned with the classification of mental disorders. Yet, systematic approaches that take into account discussions about vagueness are rare. This volume is the first in the psychiatry/philosophy literature to tackle this problem.

Design in Nature

Design in Nature
Author: Adrian Bejan
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013-01-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0307744345

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In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the constructal law, accounts for the evolution of these and many other designs in our world. Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current—of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical “flowcharts” or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies. All are governed by the same principle, known as the constructal law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.

The Practice of Value

The Practice of Value
Author: Joseph Raz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2005
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019153210X

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The Practice of Value is an exploration of a pervasive but puzzling aspect of our world: value. The starting-point is the Berkeley Tanner Lectures delivered in 2001 by the leading moral theorist Joseph Raz. His aim is to make sense of the dependence of value on social practice, without falling back on cultural relativism. The lectures are followed by discussions from three eminent philosophers, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, and Bernard Williams, and a response from. Raz. The result is a fascinating debate, accessible to readers throughout and beyond philosophy, about the relations betwee.