opposability

English[edit]

opposability (usually uncountable, plural opposabilities)

The condition or quality of being opposable (capable of being placed opposite to something else).
- 1919, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, volume 9, page 276:
  Among the Primates themselves there is a whole group of living species, the South American marmosets, that, in the fore feet at least, show no evidence of opposability, although they are strictly arboreal in habits.
The condition or quality of being opposable (capable of being resisted).
- 2006, Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument:
  This consequence remains hidden as long as custom is thought in terms of "opposabilities" in which the States' conduct is interpreted so as to render the same norm.
- 2008, Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson, European Contract Law: Materials for a Common Frame of Reference: Terminology, Guiding Principles, Model Rules:
  Although no provision of the Civil Code lays down the principle of invocability, it is nonetheless unanimously admitted and is found in substantive law in two forms: the opposability of the contract to third parties, and the opposability of the contract by third parties.