Legal Justification: Premises, Proof, and Limits
External Justification in Legal Decisions
External justification for a legal decision requires more than just a logical consequence of the premises. It necessitates proving the truth of those premises. Judges do not need to resort to techniques for interpreting the rules for these problems.
Jurisdiction Issues of the Factual Premise:
Problems of Testing and Rating:
- TEST: What warrants a factual premise is its truth, but complications arise in the field of law. There’s no single way to achieve truth, and it’s unclear if the testing process reveals the truth.
This raises two kinds of limits to establishing or evaluating a factual premise:
Epistemic Limits:
Judges are presented with facts, but these are known as a result of tests. We distinguish between deductive and inductive conceptions of proof:
- Deductive Conception: The test provides a conclusive statement of the facts.
- Inductive Conception: Testing does not lead to certainty; there is no conclusive result, but rather a probable outcome. The higher the degree of probability, the more justified the factual premise.
Regulatory Limits:
Determining truth is not the only goal of the legal process. Safeguarding fundamental rights significantly refines the process of ascertaining truth. The taking of evidence has several limitations and requires legislation. Rules determine the relevant facts.
Justification and Court Decisions
Justification in court decisions involves providing reasons to believe a given reason is true. There are two types:
- Internal Justification: Logical character of the legal premise.
- External Justification: Justifying the use of each premise.
The legal premise raises problems of:
- Relevance: Determining the applicable standard.
- Determination: Identifying the applicable standard.
- Interpretation: Attributing meaning to statutory provisions.
Judges must address language problems and functional system issues, arguing for the meaning given to the legal provision (literal, proofreader, which is further divided into analog, a fortiori, etc.).
Problems of Qualification:
These problems relate to the factual premise. Even when a judge is confident in the high probability of facts through proof, they must qualify the individual case to see if it can be subsumed within the general case. This involves addressing the vagueness of law or the open texture of legal language (as Hart described, citing examples like “excessive speed” or “luxury”).
There are clear-cut cases and vague ones. For instance, 250 km/h is always excessive, but 140 km/h on a highway without traffic and in good weather conditions, or even 130 km/h, is less clear. Similarly, questions arise about whether there is profit if stolen goods are given to the poor, or whether intimidation exists when using a fake gun.