Abstract
Blackstone and Bentham held opposing views about the legitimacy of legal fictions. Blackstone felt that legal fictions could be useful devices, whereas Bentham held them in complete contempt. This paper aims to partially reconcile these two positions. It distinguishes between two types of fictions in the law, one described as a fiction for the purposes of the law and the other as a fiction about the law. Examples are drawn from medical and patent law to highlight situations where the law has been used in a purposive manner to achieve fundamental values, compared to where the law has been distorted to realise an aim incompatible with the rule of law. Some implications for the standard doctrine of legal fictions are drawn.
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