Interpretive Convergence, Legal Acts, and Legal Agents
This line of work develops a practice-centered account of legal meaning and legal normativity. It argues that legal meaning is neither fixed by text alone nor reducible to private intention, but is stabilized through legal acts, institutional roles, public reason-giving, uptake, contestation, and correction.
It also supplies the structural layer for a broader project on human dignity, legal expressivism, and expressive harm: once law expresses a public status meaning, convergence theory asks how that meaning is received, contested, repaired, or stabilized in legal practice.
Status
The first paper in the series, The Interpretive Convergence Theory of Law, appeared in Korean Journal of Legal Philosophy Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 199-237 (2025).
The second paper, Legal Acts and Legal Agents: Interpretive Convergence, Institutional Roles, and the Structure of Legal Practice, appeared in Korean Journal of Legal Philosophy Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 35-87 (2026), DOI: 10.22286/kjlp.2026.29.1.002.
Core Questions
- How can a dispersed legal order function as a common normative practice?
- How do legal acts acquire shared public meaning?
- What role do legal agents play in producing, receiving, contesting, and stabilizing legal meaning?
- How should judicial authority be understood if it depends on public reason-giving and institutional uptake?
Key Claims
- Legal objectivity is practice-mediated.
- Legal acts must be capable of functioning as shared public norms.
- Legal agents participate in the formation, uptake, correction, and continuation of legal meaning.
- Judicial authority is mediated through institutional role, public reason-giving, review, and structured uptake.
Citation and Version Note
Please cite the Korean published article as the version of record. The English HTML/PDF is an author-facing translation and public reading version for readers who need an English entry point.
Jeyoun Son, "Legal Acts and Legal Agents: Interpretive Convergence, Institutional Roles, and the Structure of Legal Practice," Korean Journal of Legal Philosophy 29(1): 35-87 (2026), https://doi.org/10.22286/kjlp.2026.29.1.002.