Indeterminacy: Critical Notice: Law, Language and Legal Determinacy by Brian Bix

Abstract

It is not easy to summarize what this book is about, except to say that it is an exploration of a variety of themes and a variety of authors on the role of language in the practice of law, the role of theories of language in legal theory, and how all this bears on “the problems of legal determinacy.” By the latter we are to understand problems having to do with whether the law always, almost always, or never provides uniquely correct answers to legal questions like “Does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms invalidate the Federal government’s ban on tobacco advertising?” or “Is this defendant guilty of defamatory libel?” The works of several authors are discussed, with emphasis placed on Wittgenstein, Friedrich Waismann, Herbert Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Moore, and Lon Fuller. As with the writings of Wittgenstein, who serves as Bix’s philosophical inspiration, it is not always abundantly clear what the discussions all add up to. Nevertheless, it is possible to distil from Bix’s somewhat unfocused discussions the following central themes. These, as Bix himself notes, are linked by nothing stronger than “family resemblance.”