ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the metaphor of games as a general philosophical strategy for analyzing discourse and human understanding. It looks at some misapplications of the idea that the Wittgenstinian notion of a practice can best be understood as a "language game". The chapter describes ways in which the metaphor of games gives a distorted view of judicial interpretation and explores that judicial interpretation is a paradigmatic case of a deliberative practice. It outlines judicial, and particularly constitutional, interpretation insofar as the agenda of such theorists rests implicitly on the metaphor of games. Ludwig Wittgenstein seeks to inoculate against the lure of metaphors. The conundrums of philosophy are, he implies, often the misbegotten offspring of abused metaphors. The distinction between interpretivists and non-interpretivists, apparently so clear, depends on a naive epistemology. An individual's ways of reasoning and understanding, and arguing and judging, are spontaneous ways of organizing experience that reflect a shared practice.
