This doctoral thesis tries to outline the characteristics of legal concepts in general and their impact on terminography. The research is based on continental Code Law systems.
Concepts reflect the facts laid down by law.
In the course of the administration of justice these rules must be applied to the concrete situations of single cases. The main function of legal concepts is to control the interaction of humans. A precise intensional definition of concepts would hinder the adaptation of the abstract rule to the single case in question, and leave no room for interpretation of laws and the adaptation of rules to new or changed social and moral environments. Furthermore the extensional definition of a legal concept can change considerably by application of the analogy principle, i.e. extending the applicability of a rule to other cases not provided for in the law. Legal concepts can therefore not be described adequately by intensional or extensional definitions.