The following two theses seem both plausible and consistent: in cases where it is indeterminate whether the relevant legal language applies to the relevant set of facts, officials are not bound to decide the case one way rather than the other, but may reason either way; all reasons for action are—in some relevant sense—knowable. In this paper, I point out what I take to be a robust but unacknowledged tension between these two claims. The tension requires some careful teasing out, but the basic idea is that given certain further plausible assumptions concerning law, language, and normativity, the two claims turn out to be inconsistent. In addition to examining the sources of the tension in some detail, I also address several possible objections to my argument and discuss which of the many theses should be rejected.

以下两个论点似乎既合理又一致：在不确定相关法律语言是否适用于相关事实的情况下，官员不一定要以一种方式而不是另一种方式来决定案件，但可以采用任何一种方式进行推理；所有采取行动的理由——在某种相关意义上——都是可知的。在本文中，我指出了我认为这两种主张之间存在着一种强大但未被承认的张力。这种紧张关系需要仔细梳理，但基本思想是，如果对法律、语言和规范性做出某些进一步合理的假设，这两种说法就会不一致。除了详细检查紧张的根源之外，我还针对我的论点提出了几个可能的反对意见，并讨论了许多论点中的哪一个应该被拒绝。