ABSTRACT
This chapter offers the legal norms are theoretically contingent, socially constructed phenomena capable of being formulated, reformulated and repealed so as to provide for the obtaining of a range of situations, all within the bounds of theoretical possibility. The concrete norms presently operative within the Australian native title system. The chapter intends to be suggestive rather than comprehensive in relation to the relevant norms and avenues of reform operative and available in this sphere. The aim of any effective law reform agenda should be to exploit the reformist potential inherent in the interpretive ethos of a legal system and direct it to cross-culturally effective interpretive, concept-acquisitive and epistemic ends. On the physicalist and functionalist approach adopted can make good sense of that possibility and its present realization within a legal system. The meta-theoretical provides a token of the contribution which a sound philosophical analysis might make to the cause of legal reform.
