Law And Truth

Taking the question "What does it mean to say a proposition of law is true?", this book draws on the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, as well as the postmodern theory of the relationship between language, meaning and the world. It examines contemporary jurisprudential approaches to this question. Taking up a single question--"What does it mean to say a proposition of law is true?"--this book advances a major new account of truth in law. Drawing upon the later philosophy of Wittgenstein, as well as more recent postmodern theory of the relationship between language, meaning, and the world, Patterson examines leading contemporary jurisprudential approaches to this question and finds them flawed in similar and previously unnoticed ways. He offers a powerful alternative account of legal justification, one in which linguistic practice--the use of forms of legal argument--holds the key to legal meaning.