Semiotics of Law, Science of Law and Legal Meaning: analysis of the status of legal dogmatics

Abstract

This paper addresses the effects of the crisis of meaning upon the field of science. The reflections of this article have an epistemological character, in the field of the science of law. Its task is to investigate how the crisis of meaning affects science, making it vulnerable in responding to the enormous challenges of the 21st century. Hence, it highlights the importance of operating the theoretical turn from the status of truth to the status of veridiction (‘véridiction’, Fr.)—following the analysis of semiotic theory, within the Greimasian tradition—to understand scientific discourse as a practice of enunciation. It is from this point of view that the understanding of the science of law (i.e. legal dogmatics) can be revisited given its role as a science of legal meaning. Once its role has been identified, the science of law is analysed, in several aspects, in order to reach a description compatible with its current mission, in a state of dialogue with the other human and social sciences. By revisiting the meaning of the discursive practices of the science of law, one can, after all, approach its new directions, such as objectivity, autonomy, specialisation, heuristics, technical language, interdisciplinarity, technical-cognitive environment, as characteristics that highlight their current understanding.