A frequently discussed question in recent jurisprudential debates concerns the extent to which conversational
implicatures can be conveyed reliably in legal language. Roughly, an implicature is a piece of information that a
speaker communicates indirectly, that is without making the conveyed information explicit. According to the
classical analysis of implicatures, their successful communication depends on a shared expectation of interlocutors
to be cooperative in conversation. However, recently some legal theorists have claimed that in legal language
implicatures tend to be unreliable because – according to them – communicative cooperation cannot be presumed
in legal discourse to the same extent as in ordinary conversations. In this article, I will focus on implicatures in a
particular kind of legal discourse, namely judicial opinions, and I will discuss to what extent we should also be
sceptical about implicatures in this type of legal discourse. My aim is to suggest that scepticism about the reliability
of implicatures in judicial opinions appears implausible once we take evidence into account, i.e. examples of
implicatures from judicial opinions. I will argue that the evidence that sceptics provide is not only scarce but
inconclusive and present a wealth of implicatures from judicial opinions that are not unreliable. I will conclude
that an evidence-based approach casts the sceptical view into doubt and suggest that communicative cooperation
is presumed in judicial opinions, as well
