The "Open Texture" of Legal Concepts and the Semantic Prototype Theory

The article proposes the hypothesis that the idea of an "open texture" of legal concepts proposed by Herbert Hart, an English legal philosopher, influenced the formation of a semantic prototype theory, which has become widespread in modern cognitive linguistics. Hart proposed the idea of an "open texture" of legal concepts in his fundamental work The Concept of Law (1961). The key point of his idea was that the decision whether a rule applies to a particular situation often turns on delimiting the range of meaning of general terms. These general terms, according to Hart, are characterized by a duality of meaning: on the one hand, they have the so-called "core" (plain) meaning, which presupposes the existence of certain conditions under which the use of a term is clear and precise, and, on the other hand, the "penumbral" meaning, which refers to conditions under which the use of a term is unclear. It is quite difficult to determine the meaning of a term in borderline or non-standard cases. If the core meaning of a general term is clear enough, then when we move, so to speak, from the center to the periphery, the boundaries of its meaning become vague, unclear, indeterminate. We are no longer sure of the stability of its meaning, as it is in the case of its standard use. Thus, a rule containing such terms is indeterminate (or "open textured") in a sense that the instability of the meaning of a general term leads to the instability of a rule containing the term. The influence of the idea of an "open texture" of legal concepts on the formation of a semantic prototype theory can be traced in the following directions. Firstly, the idea of an "open texture" of legal concepts was suggested by Hart twelve years earlier than a prototype theory was developed. Secondly, the similarity in terminology used and methodological settings shared seems more important. Considering the ambiguity of meaning, Hart distinguished core and penumbral meanings of a concept. The prototype theory uses terms such as the central meaning of a concept and its peripheral meaning. It is shown that both Hart and representatives of a prototype theory shared Wittgenstein's view on the non-discreteness, vagueness of the boundaries of concept, which leads to essential inevitability of indeterminacy problem in both cases. And, thirdly, the idea of Hart's "open texture", as well as a prototype theory, arose in response to the traditional Aristotelian way of organizing categories and defining concepts by a set of necessary and sufficient features; and, in this capacity, it became quite an effective tool of defining both legal and natural language concepts.

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