Legal Indeterminacy in Contemporary Legal Theory

The debate over whether judges’ decisions are adequately constrained by law is predicated on a more fundamental issue، namely، whether the law is indeterminate. In the debates over legal indeterminacy، the most basic issue that may arise is: «What is the source of legal indeterminacy?» By emphasizing on the three distinct sources of those “gaps”، three distinct approaches in legal theory emerge: an ontic approach، a semantic approach، and an epistemic approach. Philosophers have also taken a parallel threefold approache to describe the similar phenomenon of vagueness. In what follows، we describe those parallel accounts، and show that they may be reconcilable in a more comprehensive theory.