On the Argumentum ad Absurdum in Statutory Interpretation: Its Uses and Normative Significance

Abstract

The ad absurdum argument can be understood either as a strictly logical tool, which is equivalent to a proof by contradiction, or as a pragmatic argument about the desirability or undesirability of a given proposition. Yet, in legal reasoning lawyers tend to use it, at least in the vast majority of cases, only in the latter sense. The argumentum ad absurdum, as I will argue, can be classified as a special kind of pragmatic argument whose specific feature is its special argumentative strength in comparison with generic consequentialist argumentation. Once we are able to grant that premise, the paper intends to explain the most important rules of interpretation that may be used to determine the conditions under which the ad absurdum argument can be correctly deployed in legal reasoning.