Truth and Correctness

Abstract

We have seen that Olivecrona maintains that in addition to its directive and technical functions in legal thinking, the concept of a right can also fulfill an informative function; and we shall see in this chapter that he maintains that legal statements in general can fulfill an informative as well as a directive function, and that in regard to the informative function, these statements can be correct or incorrect, but not true or false. I argue in this chapter (1) that while it is not entirely clear whether Olivecrona in his discussion of truth and correctness is concerned with internal or external legal statements, we should take him to have external legal statements in mind. I also argue (2) that his account of the concept of correctness is self-refuting, and (3) that in any case, a correct, but not true, legal statement cannot fulfill an informative function. But I also argue (4) that Olivecrona does not need the concept of correctness, because he could give a conventionalist account of the truth (or falsity) of legal statements. As I explained in Chap. 7, we may say that a rule is a legal rule if, and only if, it can be traced back to a recognized source of law, SL, such as legislation, precedent, or custom, and that the existence of SL is a matter of convention, in the sense that each member of the community treats SL as a source of law partly because the other members treat SL as a source of law. If we do, we may also say that any given legal statement will be true or false, depending on whether it correctly describes the relevant, conventional legal state of affairs, and this means, of course, that there will be no need to speak of the correctness of legal statements, as distinguished from the truth of such statements.