DrDavid Tan

David Tan is a Senior Lecturer at Deakin Law School and specialises in analytic legal philosophy. His main research areas are in legal interpretation as well as administrative law. In legal interpretation he works on linguistic approaches, especially intentionalist/communicative ones, to interpreting legal texts. In administrative law he has recently been working on the intersection of new technology and how that affects government decision-making. His work is published in leading international legal philosophy and law journals such as the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, and Ratio Juris.

His forthcoming monograph, Communication and Legal Interpretation, is set to be published with with Hart Publishing at the end of 2026. This monograph shows how we can contruct theories of legal interpretation that are communicative in nature while acknowledge that some normative considerations are inevitable in legal reasoning.