Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-28T03:27:19.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

NEGOTIATING THE MEANING OF “LAW”: THE METALINGUISTIC DIMENSION OF THE DISPUTE OVER LEGAL POSITIVISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

David Plunkett
David Plunkett*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, dplunkett@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One of the central debates in legal philosophy is the debate over legal positivism. Roughly, positivists say that law is ultimately grounded in social facts alone, whereas antipositivists say it is ultimately grounded in both social facts and moral facts. In this paper, I argue that philosophers involved in the dispute over legal positivism sometimes employ distinct concepts when they use the term “law” and pick out different things in the world using these concepts. Because of this, what positivists say might well then be true of one thing (e.g., law1) but false of another (e.g., law2). Accepting this thesis does not mean that the philosophers engaged in this dispute are “talking past each other” or engaged in a “merely verbal dispute” that lacks substance. I argue that participants in this dispute are sometimes arguing about what they should mean by the word “law” in the context at hand. This involves putting forward competing proposals about which concept the word “law” should be used to express. This is an issue in what I call “conceptual ethics.” This argument in conceptual ethics can be well worth having, given the connotations that the term “law” plays in many contexts, ranging from legal argument to political philosophy to social-scientific inquiry. Sometimes, I claim, philosophers (and ordinary speakers) engage in such argument tacitly by competing “metalinguistic” usages of the term “law”—usages of the term that express a view (in this case, a normative view) about the meaning of the word itself. In such cases, speakers on different sides of the positivism debate might in fact both speak truly, in terms of the literal (semantic) content of what they both say. Nonetheless, they may disagree in virtue of views in conceptual ethics about “law” that they express through the nonliteral content of what they say. These views in conceptual ethics often reflect further disagreements about issues that are not ultimately about words or concepts. These include foundational ones in ethics and politics about how we should live and what kind of institutions should govern our lives. My metalinguistic account of the dispute over legal positivism better equips us to identify what such issues are and to engage them more fruitfully.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 22 , Issue 3-4 , December 2016 , pp. 205 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Barker, Chris. 2002. “The Dynamics of Vagueness.” Linguistics and Philosophy 25:1–36.Google Scholar
Barker, Chris. 2013. “Negotiating Taste.” Inquiry 56 (2–3):240–257.Google Scholar
Bentham, Jeremy. 1970. Of Laws in General (London: Athlone Press).Google Scholar
Braddon-Mitchell, David. 2004. “Masters of Our Meanings.” Philosophical Studies 118 (1–2):133–152.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1979. “Individualism and the Mental.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1):73–121.Google Scholar
Burgess, Alexis, and Plunkett, David. 2013. “Conceptual Ethics I.” Philosophy Compass 8 (12):1091–1101.Google Scholar
Burgess, Alexis, and Plunkett, David. 2013. “Conceptual Ethics II.” Philosophy Compass 8 (12):1102–1110.Google Scholar
Burgess, Alexis, and Sherman, Brett. 2014. Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Campbell, Tom. 2004. Prescriptive Legal Positivism: Law, Rights and Democracy (London: Cavendish Publishing).Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. 2006. “Two-Dimensional Semantics.” In Lepore, E. and Smith, B., eds., Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J. 2011. “Verbal Disputes.” Philosophical Review 120 (4):515–566.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David J., and Jackson, Frank. 2001. “Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation.” Philosophical Review 110 (3):315–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 2004. “Polarity Phenomena and the Syntax/Pragmatics Interface.” In Belletti, A., ed., Structures and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Coleman, Jules L. 2001. The Practice of Principle: In Defence of a Pragmatist Approach to Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Copp, David. 2005. “Moral Naturalism and Three Grades of Normativity.” In Schaber, P., ed., Normativity and Naturalism (Frankfurt, Germany: Ontos-Verlag).Google Scholar
Dasgupta, Shamik. 2014. “The Possibility of Physicalism.” Journal of Philosophy 111 (9):557–592.Google Scholar
Davidson, Arnold I. 2001. The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Dickson, Julie. 2001. Evaluation and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press).Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 2006. Justice in Robes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 2011. Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Egan, Andy. 2012. “Relativist Dispositional Theories of Value.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (4):557–582.Google Scholar
Fine, Kit. 2012. “Guide to Ground.” In Correia, F. and Schnieder, B., eds., Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Finlay, Stephen. 2006. “Responding to Normativity.” In Shafer-Landau, R., ed., Oxford Studies in Metaethics (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Finnis, John. 2011. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Reprinted with corrections. Clarendon Law Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Foot, Philippa. 1972. “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives.” Philosophical Review 81 (3):305–316.Google Scholar
Fuller, Lon. 1958. “Positivism and Fidelity to Law—A Reply to Professor Hart.” Harvard Law Review 71:630–672.Google Scholar
Gardner, John. 2001. “Legal Positivism: 5 1/2 Myths.” American Journal of Jurisprudence 46 (199):199–228.Google Scholar
Green, Leslie. 2008. “Positivism and the Inseparability of Law and Morals.” New York University Law Review 83:1035–1058.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Mark. 2004. “How Facts Make Law.” Legal Theory 10 (3):157–198.Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1989. “Logic and Conversation.” In Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 2002. Historical Ontology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Hart, H.L.A. 1958. “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals.” Harvard Law Review 71 (4):593–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hart, H.L.A. 2012. The Concept of Law. 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2000. “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?” Nous 34 (1):31–55.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2012. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hershovitz, Scott. 2011. “The Role of Authority.” Philosophers’ Imprint 11 (7):1–19.Google Scholar
Hershovitz, Scott. 2015. “The End of Jurisprudence.” Yale Law Journal 124 (4):1160–1204.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1989. A Natural History of Negation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Jackson, Frank. 1998. From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Jenkins, C.S.I. 2014. “Merely Verbal Disputes.” Erkenntnis 79 (1):11–30.Google Scholar
Joyce, Richard. 2001. The Myth of Morality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Julius, A.J. 2015. “Public Transit.” In Pavlakos, G. and Rodriguez-Blanco, V., eds., Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kaplan, David. 1989. “Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives.” In Almog, J. and Perry, J., eds., Themes From Kaplan (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Kelsen, Hans. 1948. “Law, State and Justice in the Pure Theory of Law.” Yale Law Journal 57 (3):377–390.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Chris. 2007. “Vagueness and Grammar: The Semantics of Relative and Absolute Gradable Predicates.” Linguistics and Philosophy 30 (1):1–45.Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. 2007. Naturalizing Jurisprudence: Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. 2009. “Explaining Theoretical Disagreement.” University of Chicago Law Review 76 (3):1215–1250.Google Scholar
Letsas, George. 2014. “The DNA of Conventions.” Law and Philosophy 33 (5):535–571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1983. “New Work for a Theory of Universals.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ludlow, Peter. 2008. “Cheap Contextualism.” Philosophical Issues 18:104–129.Google Scholar
Ludlow, Peter. 2014. Living Words: Meaning Undetermination and the Dynamic Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
MacFarlane, John. 2014. Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and Its Applications (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Manley, David. 2009. “Introduction: A Guided Tour of Metametaphysics.” In Chalmers, D.J., Manley, D. and Wasserman, R., eds., Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Margolis, Eric, and Laurence, Stephen. 1999. Concepts: Core Readings (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Marmor, Andrei. 2009. Social Conventions: From Language to Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Marmor, Andrei. 2011. Philosophy of Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
McPherson, Tristram. 2011. “Against Quietist Normative Realism.” Philosophical Studies 154 (2):223–240.Google Scholar
Murphy, Liam. 2008. “Better to See Law This Way.” New York University Law Review 83 (4):1088–1108.Google Scholar
Murphy, Liam. 2014. What Makes Law: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Murphy, Mark. 2006. Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Plunkett, David. 2012. “A Positivist Route for Explaining How Facts Make Law.” Legal Theory 18 (2):139–207.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David. 2013. “Legal Positivism and the Moral Aim Thesis.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 33 (3):563–605.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David. 2015. “Which Concepts Should We Use?: Metalinguistic Negotiations and The Methodology of Philosophy.” Inquiry 58 (7–8):828–874.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David. Forthcoming. “Robust Normativity, Morality, and Legal Positivism.” In Plunkett, David, Shapiro, Scott and Toh, Kevin, eds., Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Plunkett, David, and Shapiro, Scott. Forthcoming. “Law, Morality, and Everything Else: General Jurisprudence as a Branch of Metanormative Inquiry.” Ethics.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David, and Sundell, Timothy. 2013. “Disagreement and the Semantics of Normative and Evaluative Terms.” Philosophers’ Imprint 13 (23):1–37.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David, and Sundell, Timothy. 2013. “Dworkin's Interpretivism and the Pragmatics of Legal Disputes.” Legal Theory 19 (3):242–281.Google Scholar
Plunkett, David, and Sundell, Timothy. 2014. “Antipositivist Arguments from Legal Thought and Talk: The Metalinguistic Response.” In Hubb, G. and Lind, D., eds., Pragmatism, Law, and Language (New York: Routledge).Google Scholar
Postema, Gerald J. 1982. “Coordination and Convention at the Foundations of Law.” Journal of Legal Studies 11 (1):165–203.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1975. “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:131–193.Google Scholar
Radbruch, Gustav. 2006. “Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law (1946).” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 26:1–11.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1979/2002. The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1985. “Authority and Justification.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1): 3–29.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1986. The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1994. “Authority, Law, and Morality.” In Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1998. “Two Views of the Nature of the Theory of Law: A Partial Comparison.” Legal Theory 4 (3):249–282.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 2009. Between Authority and Interpretation: On the Theory of Law and Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Rosen, Gideon. 2010. “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.” In Hale, B. and Hoffmann, A., eds., Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Scharp, Kevin. 2013. Replacing Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Schauer, Frederick. 2005. “The Social Construction of the Concept of Law: A Reply to Julie Dickson.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 25 (3):493–501.Google Scholar
Schroeter, Laura. 2008. “Why Be an Anti-Individualist?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (1):105–141.Google Scholar
Schroeter, Laura, and Schroeter, Francois. 2014. “Normative Concepts: A Connectedness Model.” Philosophers’ Imprint 14 (25):1–26.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Scott. 2011. Legality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Shiffrin, Seana. 2008. “Promising, Conventionalism, and Intimate Relationships.” Philosophical Review 117:481–524.Google Scholar
Sider, Theodore. 2012. Writing the Book of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Stavropoulos, Nicos. 1996. Objectivity in Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Stoljar, Natalie. 2013. “What Do We Want Law to Be? Philosophical Analysis and the Concept of Law.” In Waluchow, W. J. and Sciaraffa, S., eds., Philosophical Foundations of the Nature of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Sundell, Tim. 2011. “Disagreement, Error, and an Alternative to Reference Magnetism.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (4):743–759.Google Scholar
Sundell, Tim. 2011. “Disagreements about Taste.” Philosophical Studies 155 (2): 267–288.Google Scholar
Thomasson, Amie L. 2016. “Metaphysical Disputes and Metalinguistic Negotiation.” Analytic Philosophy. 57 (4):1–28.Google Scholar
Thomasson, Amie L. 2017. “What Can We Do, When We Do Metaphysics?” In d'Oro, Giuseppina and Overgaard, Søren, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Toh, Kevin. 2013. “Jurisprudential Theories and First-Order Legal Judgments.” Philosophy Compass 8 (5):457–471.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 2001. “Normative (or Ethical) Positivism.” In Coleman, J. L., ed., Hart's Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Weatherson, Brian. 2003. “What Good Are Counterexamples?” Philosophical Studies 115:1–31.Google Scholar
Woods, Jack. 2017. “The Frege-Geach Problem.” In McPherson, T. and Plunkett, D., eds., The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics (New York: Routledge).Google Scholar