Epistemology of Legal Judgments

Abstract

THERE are three major ways of understanding any subject. The science of epistemology tells us what they are. It does this by investigating our human ways of knowing, with particular reference to how words obtain their various species of meanings. Since law, perhaps more than most subjects, is concerned with the use and the interpretation of language, it may help us to understand and evaluate the all-or-none principle in legal judgments if we describe three major epistemological theories of knowledge, including their respective conceptions of the meaning of words, and relate them to the settling of legal disputes.