Vagueness and Law

Geert Keil, Professor of Philosophy, Humboldt University Berlin,Ralf Poscher, Director at the Institute for Philosophy of Law, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg

Prof. Dr. Ralf Poscher is director of the Institute for Philosophy of Law at Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and managing director of the Centre for Security and Society of the University of Freiburg. Prof. Poscher has been a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence (2013), a guest researcher of the "Program in Law and Public Affairs" at Princeton University (2012), a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA (2007-2008), and a visiting professor at the University of Osaka (2007). His areas of research cover legal theory, fundamental rights and national security law.


Geert Keil is Professor of Philosophy at Humboldt University of Berlin. His main areas of research are the philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, philosophical anthropology and metaphysics. Awarded with a Heisenberg scholarship of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and a Feodor Lynen scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he researched at the Universities of Trondheim, Stanford, and Basel. From 2005 to 2010 he held a chair in theoretical philosophy at RWTH Aachen University.

Introduction Ralf Poscher and Geert Keil
Part I: Theories of Vagueness and Their Impact on Jurisprudence
1. Philosophical and Jurisprudential Issues of Vagueness, Stephen Schiffer
2. Vagueness in Law: Placing the Blame Where It's Due, Diana Raffman
3. An Intentionalist Account of Vagueness: A Legal Perspective, Ralf Poscher
4. Can Legal Practice Adjudicate Between Theories of Vagueness?, Hrafn Asgeirsson
5. Semantics, Metaphysics, and Objectivity in the Law, Michael S. Moore
Part II: Vagueness Phenomena in Law
6. Pragmatic Vagueness in Statutory Law, Andrei Marmor
7. Second-Order Vagueness in the Law, Frederick Schauer
8. The Non-Conservativeness of Legal Definitions, Marc Andree Weber
9. The Role of Vagueness and Context Sensitivity in Legal Interpretation, Nikola Kompa
Part III: Dealing with Vagueness in Law
10. Why It Is So Difficult to Resolve Vagueness in Legal Interpretation, Lawrence M. Solan
11. Vagueness and Political Choice in Law, Brian Bix
12. Non-Epistemic Uncertainty and the Problem of Legal Line-Drawing, Leo Katz
13. Smoothing Vague Laws, Adam Kolber
14. How Vagueness Makes Judges Lie, Roy Sorensen
15. Clarity, Thoughtfulness, and the Rule of Law, Jeremy Waldron