What Can Content-Force Distinction Teach Us About Law?

Alexandre Hermet

"What Can Content-Force Distinction Teach Us About Law?", in Verena Klappstein & Maciej Dybowski (dir.), Languages of the Law - Vocabularies and Uses, Springer, 2025, pages 145-165

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-72923-2

Abstract : The distinction between the content and the force of an utterance is quite common in the philosophy of language. This distinction can be traced back to the works of Frege, and the speech act theory is undoubtedly one of its most notable outcomes. This chapter argues that a similar distinction can be observed in the field of law. Indeed, every legal item has two aspects: its content (e.g. an obligation, the creation of an institution, etc.) and its legal status (the special quality of being a legal item). The chapter emphasises that the legal status of a legal proposition is not a consequence of specific deontic or syntactic forms, and that only declarative utterances produce such a result. It therefore argues that legal status does not appear to be equivalent as a linguistic force but arises from non-linguistic conventions. The chapter concludes with some methodological remarks. The primary concern is to identify the linguistic modalities by which law is formulated, given that this is a prerequisite for any ascertainment of law.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-72923-2?sap-outbound-id=BDDE5440B2541B5E2B39E7D16FD5F704487F40D0