Interpretation of Law as Language Game: The Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons in the Courtroom

In this text we will focus on the interpretation of law, specifically on the question of how the meaning of legal texts is created and recreated through judicial interpretation of law. To be able to explain how this happens, we will use the philosophy of language, in particular the philosophy of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wilfrid Sellars and Robert B. Brandom. In their view, language is not a tool that serves primarily and exclusively to describe a world that exists independently of us and our attitudes, but through language we co-create the world we live in. Many of the things we perceive in the world around us are accessible to us and exist because of our language.