Judicial Discretion as a Result of Systemic Indeterminacy

Abstract

The topic of ‘judicial discretion’ has been at the center of the debate on legal interpretation in the philosophy of law.1 In a general sense, ‘discretion’ here refers to the exercise of a judgment by a decision-maker due to the lack of legal constraints affecting one’s ability to decide a case. The most fundamental question on this topic is ‘do judges have discretion when interpreting the law?’ There are three kinds of answers to this query. One kind of answer states that judges never have discretion.2 Another kind of answer states that judges always have discretion in interpretation.3 The third kind of answer states that judges sometimes have discretion when interpreting the law, and sometimes they do not.4