Abstract

That the law should guide those who are subject to it is both requirement and rationale of the law. Yet many legal norms are indeterminate and, therefore, incapable of guiding the conduct of their subjects. This note seeks to answer part of the conceptual puzzle implied by the use of such legal norms: does their indeterminacy serve some positive function? I proceed by way of literature review to identify seven functions of legal indeterminacy that scholars have identified but note that their use is not thereby made necessarily justifiable.