Concepts as Tools of Legal Reasoning – How Pragmatics May Promote the Rationality of International Legal Discourse and the Work of Legal Scholars

Concepts are an important element of the way international lawyers think and talk about international law. They materialise as conceptual terms, such as ‘jurisdiction’, ‘self-defence’ and ‘abuse of rights’. To enable a critical evaluation of international law and legal discourse, it is important that single instances of use of such terms be fully understood. This task presupposes a full recognition of the social meaning of legal utterances. Conceptual terms are uttered not only to describe the law, but also to affect the beliefs, attitudes and behaviour of readers and listeners. International lawyers are acquainted with this social side of legal meaning but lack a theory firmly grounded in pragmatic research that can help them systematically describe and investigate it. This article provides precisely such a theory. Crucially, it also explains how the suggested theory of meaning may promote the rationality of international legal discourse and the work of legal scholars.