Interpretation and Indeterminacy: Comments on Andrei Marmor's Philosophy of Law

Legal interpretation is a reasoning process. In legal practice and adjudication, it is sometimes necessary to find reasons for a conclusion as to what something means. A legal interpretation offers reasons for ascribing a legal meaning to an object (the object, typically, being the communicative act of an authority or of a person or institution to whose communicative acts the law gives legal effect—such as parties to a contract). A good legal interpretation gives good reasons for ascribing a legal meaning to the object. This view of interpretation, and of its role in law, is in some respects compatible with the original, perceptive, and provocative things that Andrei Marmor has had to say about legal interpretation since his 1993 book, Interpretation and Legal Theory. But the view of legal interpretation as a process of reasoning creates a problem in explaining the relationship between indeterminacy and interpretation. I will address...