Textual Interpretation in the Law

What Words Say, and How Judges Read Them
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-96486-7
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 350 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Law, Language and Communication

How do courts choose among competing readings of a text? This work draws on linguistics, philosophy of language, hermeneutics, and literary criticism for insights into how texts impart meaning. Through vivid examples and in-depth case studies—of reported judicial decisions rather than stylized hypotheticals—it translates learnings into practical guidance.

Many interpretive disputes arise from ordinary linguistic indeterminacy. Part I develops a taxonomy of linguistic features that create uncertainty, including issues overlooked in legal scholarship. It demonstrates that, despite a rich literature on the very problems that courts grapple with, judges rely primarily on their own intuitions, often reaching conclusions that diverge from current theory. Part II describes processes by which implicit meaning is inferred, and marshals evidence that judicial reasoning reflects these processes. It shows that presuppositional content, though rarely recognized as such, can be outcome-determinative, and challenges the orthodoxy that implicature plays only a minimal role in judicial reasoning.

Readers will emerge with a toolkit—diagnostic tests, checklists, analytic methods, and heuristics—for categorizing linguistic phenomena, resolving ambiguities, and constructing (or spotting fallacies in) text-based arguments. This book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and practitioners—in law, philosophy, pragmatics, communications, and forensic linguistics.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Diamond, N. H. E

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Sprachphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Schreiben und Publizieren, Kreatives Schreiben
• Rechtswissenschaften Wirtschaftsrecht Medienrecht Telekommunikationsrecht, IT-Recht, Internetrecht

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction Part I: Linguistic Indeterminacy and its resolution Chapter 1. Why linguistics? Chapter 2. Lexical ambiguity Chapter 3. Syntactic ambiguity Chapter 4. Scope ambiguity Chapter 5. Indeterminacy of reference: definite descriptions and names Chapter 6. Indeterminacy of reference: indefinite descriptions Chapter 7. Anaphora and discourse deixis Part II: Pragmatic Processes in Interpretation Chapter 8. Implication and Inference Chapter 9. Presupposition Chapter 10. Implicature Chapter 11. Literal meaning.

Über Autor(innen)

N. H. E. Diamond studied Linguistics and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University, holds a law degree from the University of Virginia, and spent more than twenty years as a transactional lawyer specializing in franchise, retail, and sales and distribution.