Take the first possibility. There seems to be no consensus among judges about the proper method of legal interpretation. Instead, there is widespread controversy (Hart and Sacks 1994, 1169; Eskridge 1994, 13–47; Eskridge, Frickey &amp; Garret 2007, 689–846; for a few haphazardly chosen examples, see the various methods employed and advocated in the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in Smith, Bond, Yates, Weber, and King v. Burwell). A theorist could try to argue that, at a high level of generality, there is a consensus among judges on the theorist’s preferred method of interpretation, and that the disagreement is in the application of that consensus.