The first part of this essay argues specifically that legal speech acts are not statements but question/answer constructions. The focus in this section is on the underlying interrogative structure of the legal decision. The second part of the paper touches on significant topics related to the concept of legal speech acts, including the philosophic notions of speech acts, the influence of these philosophic notions on linguistic analyses of speech acts, an overview of F. W. Maitland's famous study on the forms of action in English law (especially as the study pertains to the interrogative construction of decisions), and a discussion of some of the basic tenets found in David Rayfield's "Action: An Analysis of the Concept." (RL)