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    Law’s Language

    Author(s): Daniel Wodak

    ISBN: 9781009114073
    Publication Date: 11/12/2025
    Pages: 75
    Sale price£18.00 GBP

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    Law’s Language

    Law’s Language

    Cambridge University Press Bookshop

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    The language of law includes normative or prescriptive terms such as 'obligation' and 'permission'. How do we explain the meaning of prescriptive legal language? This has long been regarded as a problem for positivists, since at first glance their view suggests we can derive an ought – a legal obligation or right or permission – from descriptive social facts alone. This Element outlines what we should want from a semantics of prescriptive legal language, critically evaluates four leading semantic accounts, and argues that legal prescriptivity is not, in the end, a problem for positivists.