The sorites paradox and vagueness phenomena in the language of law

English abstract: In order to make a legal text more flexible, the lawmaker is enacting in its content the vague predicates. Provisions with such predicates are applied by the courts that are forming their content in every specific case depending on the case facts. This paper’s purpose is to explain an issue of the vagueness, point out and compare the varieties of vagueness in legal texts specified by A. Marmor and T. Gizbert-Studnicki and at last try to apply law’s vague predicates – anchored and not anchored in definite numbers – to the sorites paradox which is immanently associated with the vagueness phenomena.

Keywords: vagueness, language of law, sorites paradox, weighing the rightness