The Later Wittgenstein and Law

The later Wittgenstein's view about language, meaning, philosophy and its function has a great impact on several humanities and social science. Law has been affected from this view such as other disciplines. Jurists apply this novel philosophy to interpretation of legal words, legal decision making, and to criticize legal schools. Not only legal theorist, but also judges apply Wittgenstein's theory to justify their decisions. As for interpreting of legal words, proponents of Wittgenstein try to understand legal words in relation to their context in which they are used. Therefore they refute any idea that has static view about meaning of legal words. This meaning theory has a revolutionary affect on the traditional idea of contract law. Also, Wittgenstein can provide us with some criteria to discover misunderstanding and oversimplification of legal schools about identification of law, process of decision making in law and how agreement or disagreement are possible in legal practice.