Practice legitimates because legitimacy is a matter of practice. Some may take my obstinate refusal to provide a nontrivial validation of arguments as implying that legal propositions cannot therefore be true or false. I do not deny that legal propositions have truthconditions. I deny only that these can be satisfied in any nontrivial way-in any way external to the practice itself. A proposition of constitutional law is true if it forms part of the rationale offered in support of a legal decision and if that rationale is composed of the kinds of arguments recognized in legal practice as legitimate.

DEFINE: Clarifies a theory of legal truth: propositions are true only insofar as they participate in the rationale of decisions, recognized as legitimate within legal practice itself. Builds on: "Legal truth rests on professional assent, not external reference."

Philip Chase Bobbitt, Philip Chase Bobbitt - Refl…, loc. 438