When interpreters ‘read in’ content that is not explicitly encoded in the text, they are deploying pragmatic, rather than semantic, processes. In this chapter we review how courts have viewed the ‘implication’ of content that goes beyond the text. This serves as an introduction to Part II , which deals with pragmatic processes . Two pragmatic phenomena—presupposition and implicature—are introduced here, to be explored more fully in the chapters that follow. Both are processes whereby readers infer propositional content that is not explicitly asserted.