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date: 06 December 2019

Abstract and Keywords

Few topics in the theory of language are as closely related to legal interpretation as the linguistic indeterminacy associated with ambiguity and vagueness. Significant portions of the institutional legal system, especially courts at the appellate level and supreme courts, are for the most part concerned not with disentangling the facts of cases but with the indeterminacies of the law. In a colloquial sense, both vagueness and ambiguity are employed generically to indicate indeterminacy. This is the sense in which vagueness is understood in the ‘void for vagueness’ doctrine, according to which a statute is considered void if it is framed in terms so indeterminate that its meaning can only be guessed at. Vagueness may relate to individuation or classification. There are at least four different vantage points from which to address the problems caused by vagueness: logic, ontology, epistemology, and semantics. This article explores ambiguity and vagueness in legal interpretation, and discusses other forms of indeterminacy, kinds of vagueness, and vagueness and the rule of law.

Keywords: ambiguity, vagueness, legal interpretation, indeterminacy, rule of law, individuation, classification, vagueness doctrine, logic, semantics

Ralf Poscher

Ralf Poscher is Professor of Public Law and Director of the Institute for Staatswissenschaft and Philosophy of Law, Dep. 2: Philosophy of Law at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany. He holds a PhD in Law and was awarded the post-doctorate degree “Habilitation” with the venia legendi for Public Law, History of Constitutional Law and Legal Philosophy, at the Humboldt-University Berlin. His writings include a wide range of topics in public law and jurisprudence. He has published books (in German) about the theory of fundamental rights and the concept of probability in police law and co-authored volumes in domestic and international public law. His most recent writings in English cover jurisprudential questions such as a critique of the principal theory of Robert Alexy, and the Hart–Dworkin debate. In 2007 he held a research fellowship at the University of Osaka, Japan and for the academic year 2007/08 was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. Together with Geert Keil (Philosophy, Humboldt-University Berlin) he coordinates the research group “Dealing Reasonably with Blurred Boundaries,” funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

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