Ambiguity in EU Law: A Linguistic and Legal Analysis

Ambiguity – an expression or utterance giving rise to at least two mutually exclusive interpretations – has been traditionally regarded as an ever-present, and therefore trivial, feature of EU law, alongside other forms of linguistic indeterminacy. At the same time, ambiguity has been condemned as a perilous defect in the legal text, since it is commonly assumed that the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) would necessarily exploit it to engage in judicial activism. In contrast, more recent t...