Hart asserted that a legal system is a system of rules conferring powers and imposing tariffs validated by a “recognition rule.” This rule shall not be made applicable by any other provision; It is a “social rule”. To explain this crucial concept of social rule, Hart turned to the use of words to explain the normativity of law. He asserted that a social rule is a regular pattern of behavior accompanied by a “distinctive normative attitude” that “consists of the individual`s constant willingness to take such patterns of behavior both as a guide for his or her own future behavior and as norms of criticism” (Hart, 2012, 255). In considering this disposition, or “inner attitude,” Hart emphasized speech acts—the participants` use of normative language practice. As mentioned above, legal English is very different from standard English in many ways. But Dworkin would probably have extended his “semantic sting” argument to an argument that the communication model suffers from a “semantic and pragmatic sting”—that is, .dem misunderstanding that the content of the law is determined by agreement both in terms of word semantics and in terms of the pragmatics of communication. He would no doubt have said that the only antidote to this sting is his theory of “constructive interpretation,” which asserts that the “pragmatic” aspects of language use in law include the attitude that the law must justify the use of state coercion, which obliges the interpreter to construct and justifies the theory of rights and duties that best fits and justifies the overall legal practice. This was Dworkin`s essential claim. His semantic spurring argument cannot undermine the communication model itself, since his argument was based on an impoverished view of the controversy that can arise from communication. The study of law and the structure of the legal system Two features of this theory combine the philosophy of law with the philosophy of language. One feature is methodical, the other is content-related. First, Bentham proposes his theory as a definition of the concept of law (see section 6.1 below, on “Definition as a Methodology in Philosophy of Law”).
Second, it defines a law as a particular type of accumulation of signs (see section 2.1 on “Law and signs”). According to Bentham, a law is a collection of signs, and the philosophy of law is a form of philosophy of language. The legal theorist has the linguistic task of defining the concepts (especially law, but also others) of legal discourse. According to this document, the content of Community law depends on a traditional way of recognising legislation. But if community members share a way of recognizing their right, how can they get involved in the deep conflicts over the law that we all know so well? Dworkin has made this issue a central point of the jurisprudential debate. And he framed the question as an objection to a mistaken view of language and the relationship between law and language. He began his book Law`s Empire (Dworkin 1986b) by arguing that legal theorists like Hart cannot explain theoretical disagreements in legal practice because they believe lawyers share uncontroversial tests (tests that Dworkin called “criteria”) for the truth of legal sentences. The “semantic spur” implies the misconception that the language of law can only make sense if lawyers share such criteria. It is fatal to a legal theory because it leads the theorist to believe that people cannot have a profound (or “substantial” or “real”) disagreement about the law. You can only (1) argue about empirical questions, for example: what words were used in a law, or (2) how criminal cases should be resolved, or (3) whether the law should be changed. If you suffer from semantic sting, you will conclude that disagreeing on the criteria for applying the language of the law would be tantamount to using the same words with different meanings.
People who disagree this way are just talking to each other. Here`s how Dworkin laid out the views of theorists suffering from the semantic sting: Legal English has traditionally been reserved for lawyers from English-speaking countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, and South Africa) who share common law traditions. Due to the spread of legal English as the dominant language of international affairs, as well as its role as a legal language within the European Union, legal English is now a global phenomenon. It can be informally called Lawsspeak. [ref. needed] Written statements submitted to the court outlining a party`s legal or factual allegations about the case. Systematic efforts to use philosophical knowledge about language to solve legal philosophical problems are relatively new. Jeremy Bentham may have been the first to try deliberately. He developed a radically empiricist theory of the meaning of words that supported his utilitarianism and legal theory. There is no reason to describe the work of Hart or Dworkin as a definition of the word “law.” And the definition of this word would not solve any of the problems of jurisprudence (as Hart pointed out).
The main reason is that the problems of legal philosophers and their disputes would not be resolved by an explanation of the meaning of the word “law”, which would be useful to someone who did not know it. Legal philosophers cannot solve their problems by giving a definition of the word “law,” any more than philosophers of language can solve their problems by giving a definition of the word “language” (for a discussion of the legal philosophical implications of the semantics and metasemantics of the word “law,” see Coleman and Simchen 2003). It is true that in order to decide what the sources directed (and thus, in Raz`s words, must identify the existence and content of a law), one must understand the meaning in which a word such as “vehicle” is used. But the existence and content of the offence can still be established without first assessing whether doing what Mr Burr did or whether there should be an offence of driving without tyres.