This article by Matt McManus (@MattPolProff) recently published at Quillette made me remember H.L.A. Hart’s theory of law and the problems derived from the open texture of language, a concept borrowed by him from Friedrich Waismann, an Austrian Mathematician and philosopher of the Vienna Circle. Many authors would rather distinguish “open texture” from vagueness: being the latter a proper linguistic matter, the former is related to the dynamic of the experience. As Kyle Wallace summarized the problem: “certain expressions are open textured simply because there is always the possibility that in some new experience we may be uncertain whether or not the new expression is applicable.”

However, Brian Bix, in his “H.L.A. Hart and the ‘open texture’ of language,” argues that, despite the concept of “open texture” being a loan from Waismann’s philosophy, the use gave to the term by Hart is not derogatory at all. With respect to Hart’s point of view, the “open texture” of the law is rather an advantage, since it endows the judges with a discretionary power to adjust the text of the law to the changing experience.

Concerning individual liberty, the laudatory qualification of the open texture of the law made by Hart and Bix might be shared by the jurists of the Common Law tradition, but it hardly would be accepted by anyone from the Civil Law System. According to the former, every discretionary power enabled to the judges helps to prevent the political power from menacing individual liberties, while, following the latter, the written word of the law, passed by a legislative assembly according to constitutional proceedings, is the main guarantee of individual rights.

But the subject of the open texture of the language of the law acquires a new dimension when it is related to the coordination problem derived from the limits to knowledge in society. As it was distinguished by F. A. Hayek in the last chapter of Sensory Order, we could talk about two types of limits to knowledge: the relative and the absolute. The relative limit to knowledge depends upon the sharpness of our instruments used to gather information, whereas the absolute limit to knowledge is sealed by the increasing degrees of abstraction that constitute every classification system. Since every new experience demands the rearrangement of the current system of classification we use to order our perception of reality, the description of this feedback process requires a supplementary system of classification of a higher level of complexity. The progress of the subject of knowledge into higher levels of abstraction reaches an unconquerable limit when he is tasked with the full study of himself.

Thus, we could ascertain that the judiciary function would be enough to fulfill the problems that could arise from the open texture of law, since the judge pronounces the content of the law not in general terms, but in concrete definitions in order to solve a case. In this labour, the judge not only applies the positive law, but he might “discover” abstract principles that become relevant in order to the given new experiences that begot the controversy over the content of the law he is due to solve. This function of “immanent critique” of the positive law by the judiciary system is well discussed by F. A. Hayek in the fifth chapter of his Law, Legislation and Liberty. Since the judiciary function solves in every concrete case the coordination problem derived from the fragmentation of knowledge in society, the open texture of the law does not make it opaque to the citizens.

That notwithstanding, the open texture of the law remains as a systemic limit to the legislative assemblies to define the whole content of the law. Thus, since the whole content of the law can only be achieved in a given concrete case by a judge solving a particular controversy, every central planner would have to accomplish his model of society not through decisions based on principles, but on expediency. Central planning and rule of law will be always set to collide. In this sense, the concept of open texture of the law might work as a powerful argument for the impossibility of every central planning to be performed, sooner or later, under the rule of law.