Legal Interpretation as Linguistic Interpretation with Andy Yu (Western Law)

Andy Yu is an Assistant Professor at Western University’s Faculty of Law, with a cross-appointment in the Department of Philosophy, where his work is informed by philosophical logic and the philosophy of language and focuses on legal philosophy, constitutional law, administrative law, property law, and legal interpretation. Before joining Western Law in 2022, he clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal for Ontario, earned his JD from the University of Toronto and his DPhil and BPhil from the University of Oxford, and co-directs the Legal Philosophy Research Group and interdisciplinary projects on law and language.

Legal Interpretation as Linguistic Interpretation

In this paper, I defend the view that legal interpretation is linguistic interpretation. Although the view might seem so obvious to many philosophers so as to not require a defence, the view has recently come under sustained attack by some legal philosophers, perhaps most prominently Mark Greenberg. I canvass arguments by Greenberg and others for rejecting the view that legal interpretation is linguistic interpretation, and I argue that the arguments against the view fail. I suggest instead that the default view is and should be that legal interpretation is linguistic interpretation, and I further suggest that the philosophy of language has the resources to adequately answer the challenges.