Abstract

What philosophers have in mind when they think about vagueness are sorites cases. Unlike vague scientific or artificial expressions, however, vague natural language expressions do not display the kind of vagueness that we associate with the sorites; they rather display what I call cluster vagueness. A non-trivial consequence of this is that those legal definitions that state precisifications of natural language concepts not only add aspects of meaning to existing expressions but also effectively change the meanings of these expressions. From this, in turn, it follows that we should avoid precisifying ordinary expressions with the help of legal definitions to the extent that we wish legal language to be in line with natural language. And being in line with natural language may help us to deal with gaps in our laws at the very moment we become aware of them, and not just afterwards.