Publication details
Je otázka paradoxu minimálních rozdílů relevantní pro právo?
| Title in English | Is the Question of the Sorites Paradox Relevant to Law? |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Pravník |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | Open access časopisu |
| Keywords | sorites paradox; indeterminacy; vagueness; lexical warfare; language game |
| Description | In legal practice, there is often talk of the vagueness or indeterminacy of the language or the law itself. It is therefore not surprising that legal theory is also concerned with these issues. Perhaps the most respected theorists currently addressing vagueness in law are Timothy Endicott and Scott Shapiro. What the two have in common is that they have focused a fair amount of attention on the so-called sorites paradoxes. In this text, we will point out that the sorites paradox is not so relevant to law, and that vagueness and indeterminacy in law is caused more by other phenomena. Thus, the aim of the text is to show that the pile paradox is not so relevant to law and does not have as far-reaching an impact as Endicott claims. In order to prove our thesis, we will first focus our attention on the pile paradoxes themselves, where, within philosophy as well as logic, these have been studied in detail, as Endicott and Shapiro follow up, and various solutions to these paradoxes have been proposed. We will point out that these paradoxes, are not so relevant to law. This will lead to the second part of the text, where we will introduce other sources of vagueness and indeterminacy and argue that it is these other sources, such as open texture, family resemblance, and multi-dimensional polysemy that cause law to be vaguer and more indeterminate. Following this, we will address the question of what actually happens in the interpretation and application of law in these cases. We will argue that lexical wars are authoritatively adjudicated here, but where the judge does not act as Humpty Dumpty, but his decision is constrained by the rules that previous interpreters have participated in shaping, and is also his responsibility for co-creating concepts for future interpretations. |
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