ABSTRACT
Legal theories advocating the connection of the law with other normative orders generally either explicitly revolve around or implicitly accept the thesis that legal discourse is open to all information and to all potential participants. It gives a brief exposition of the groundwork of Habermasian discourse theory and Alexy's Special Case Thesis. This chapter analyses legal utterances in the light of speech act theory, which informs Habermas' and Alexy's thought. The objective is to find what lies at the basis of meaningful communication in institutionalized legal discourse and track down what it is that participants in legal discourse share before entering legal discourse and in order for them to be able to do so. The chapter explores further idea that the law is bound to shared normative experiences and the merging of the constative with the performative, at the same time as highlighting that State law necessarily obstructs this horizon of knowledge'.
