ABSTRACT
The justices' accounts of what is necessary, possible but unrealized, and impossible, both in general and in particular cases, are both descriptive and prescriptive. These accounts purport to describe a shared reality, but they also create the shared professional reality of lawyers by making some possibilities conceivable and articulable and keeping others out of bounds. The law world is both distinct from and integrated into the non-law world. Like the worlds of narrative fiction, the "law world" is part of our shared reality. This chapter outlines some features of language dealing with possibility, as opposed to actuality. It considers the psychological and cultural implications of this kind of language and the thought it reflects and prompts. A person's developmental surroundings affect not only the person's actual opportunities, but also what the person perceives as opportunities—the worlds possible for that person.
