Beyond "ambiguity."

• In Event: Theory Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Legal ambiguity has been central to sociolegal inquiry. There are, perhaps unsurprisingly then, a large number of concepts that are used to make sense of legal ambiguity, often reflecting topical and analytical differences in different areas of sociolegal research. This has led to considerable siloing and analytical imprecision, rendering researchers poorly positioned to leverage the insights from work on legal ambiguity across subfields or to make connections between traditions that may be ontologically compatible. Frost and Schaaf (2024) developed a four-part typology (lexical, substantive, conflictual, and operational) to make sense of the different kinds of ambiguity contributing to authoritarianism in Jordan. In this paper, we draw on their typology, while adding a fifth category (relational), to organize many of the most prominent concepts related to legal ambiguity. The novel review of the legal ambiguity literature will enable future scholars to more readily draw on the full array of scholarship to better explain the multiple causes, forms, and consequences of ambiguity in their areas of inquiry. In so doing, sociolegal scholars can more clearly attend to the dynamic nature of ambiguity and how it can be a site or tool for conflict, power, and progress.

Author

• Connor Strobel, University of Chicago