The debate over whether judges’ decisions are adequately constrained by law is predicated on a more fundamental issue, namely, whether the law is indeterminate. In the debates over legal indeterminacy, the most basic issue that may arise is: "What is the source of legal indeterminacy?" By emphasizing on the three distinct sources of those “gaps”, three distinct approaches in legal theory emerge: an ontic approach, a semantic approach, and an epistemic approach. Philosophers have also taken a parallel threefold approache to describe the similar phenomenon of vagueness. In what follows, we describe those parallel accounts, and show that they may be reconcilable in a more comprehensive theory.













* Corresponding author’s E-mail: hojatima@modares.ac.ir