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Psychiatric consultation services to migrants could be made more effective by enhancing: (a) cultural competence, through cultural mediator involvement; and (b) social support from the first psychiatric contact. These two characteristics of psychiatric consultation could be developed from resources ordinarily present in the context of a CMHC and could then become a cost-effective strategy for addressing mental health needs among first-generation immigrants.

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This essay investigates the applicability of Grice's theory of conversational implicatures to legal interpretation, in order to highlight some of its characteristics. After introducing the notions of language and discourse, and briefly explaining the most salient aspects of Grice's theory, I will analyse the interpretation of two types of legal acts; authoritative legal acts and acts of private autonomy. Regarding the first class, exemplified by statutes, I will argue against the applicability of Gricean theory due to the conflictual behaviour of the addressees and, above all, to the insurmountable indeterminacy of the contextual elements. As far as acts of private autonomy are concerned, exemplified by contracts, I will argue that the cooperative principle is applicable, at least in those legal systems that include the principle of bona fides among the interpretative regulations of such acts.

This paper aims to investigate the applicability of Grice's theory of conversational implicatures to legal statutes and other general heteronomous legal acts (while acts of private autonomy are excluded from the scope of the present investigation). After a brief presentation of Grice's theory Sect. 1 and an attempt to adapt conversational maxims to normative discourse -which is assumed to be neither true nor false Sect. 2 -I will survey one of the most convincing arguments against the applicability of conversational maxims to the legal domain, the one based on the (absence of a precise, real) legislative intention Sect. 3 . I will argue that this argument is not decisive, but that, however, conversational maxims do not apply to legislation: as a matter of fact, legal practice does not include Grice's conversational maxims among its conventions Sect. 4 . This inapplicability, which derives from the very nature of the cooperative principles and the maxims, fi ts other peculiarities of legal practice: perhaps the most relevant is what we may call the contextual indeterminacy of legal discourse, a characteristic that is rigidly coupled to its confl icting nature. I will claim that all these features explain why legislation and other general heteronomous legal acts are not special cases of ordinary conversations Sect. 5 .

1Currently in legal theory, there exists a very widespread thesis, according to which legislation is a form of intentional communication that is similar, if not identical, to ordinary conversation, and that therefore legal interpretation does not significantly differ from ordinary understanding. In particular, the so-called conversational model 1 claims that legal interpretation and ordinary understanding are articulated according to an analogous process, governed by similar inferential rules: specifically, both fit with a pattern that can be traced back to Paul Grice's thesis. 2In this essay, after a brief presentation of Grice's theory, I will advance some criticisms of the conversational model: I will seek to show that this model is not suitable for legal interpretation, since so-called legislative intent is not able to play the role that speaker's intention plays in the Gricean model. Grice's conversational model of ordinary communication 3According to Grice the meaning of an instance of language use is the meaning that the speaker intends to communicate. More precisely, by uttering (and intending to utter) x, a speaker means S, if and only if she intends (a) that the hearer understand S; (b) that the hearer recognize that the speaker intends (a), at least in part on the basis of utterance x; and (c) that the hearer understand S partly on the basis of the fulfillment of (b). Against the conversational model of legal interpretation Revus, in print | 2020 Against the conversational model of legal interpretation Revus, in print | 2020 Against the conversational model of legal interpretation Revus, in print | 2020

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The phenomenon of defeasibility has long been a central theme in legal literature. This essay aims to shed new light on that phenomenon by clarifying some fundamental conceptual issues. First, the most widespread definition of legal defeasibility is examined and criticized. The essay shows that such a definition is poorly constructed, inaccurate and generates many problems. Indeed, the definition hides the close relationship between legal defeasibility and legal interpretation. Second, this essay argues that no new definition is needed. I will show that from an interpretative standpoint, there is nothing special about legal defeasibility. Contrary to what some authors maintain, no unique or privileged source of legal defeasibility exists, nor are there privileged arguments to justify it. Specifically, legal defeasibility refers to interpretative outcomes deriving from interpretative arguments that, on the one hand, are very different from one another, and, on the other, are often employed to justify different interpretative outcomes. In the legal field, the problems related to defeasibility have little in common with the problems that this label covers in other areas—such as logic or epistemology—and they are nothing but the well-known problems related to legal interpretation. In conclusion, this paper argues that as far as legal argumentation is concerned, the notion of legal defeasibility lacks explanatory power, and it should be abandoned.