Abstract
Problems related to a conflict about the content of rights are analysed below from the legal-linguistic perspective in the context of the recent dispute about voting rights in Hong Kong. The central legal-linguistic problem that is also the starting point for the analysis of argumentative samples is the question whether legal and legally relevant, yet not strictly legal arguments in such disputes are actually cross-cultural. Furthermore, the question what role, if any, the culture-specific arguments and legal-linguistic devices play in such conflicts is considered as well. With this aim in mind, legal provisions relevant to the conflict and the argumentation used by the opposing sides are explored to find out the legal-linguistically relevant mechanisms that might facilitate the solution of conflicts about the content of rights. Fairness as an interpretive device appears as the most appealing cross-cultural mechanism. Meanwhile, its application in conflict solution mechanisms shows the embeddedness of legal mechanisms in broader social structures that also set limits to the application of purely legal discursive devices. As a result, the analysed conflict appears as an amalgam of legal and extra-legal arguments and non-verbal signs that in their application are cross-cultural. Equally, fairness as an interpretive device in law is deemed cross-cultural, yet also limited in the scope of its application to discursive practices in which it emerges.
Highlights
Fairness as an interpretive device appears as the most appealing cross-cultural mechanism
When different legal cultures such as the Continental European and the Chinese are compared, the methodological problem of comparability imposes itself as an additional burden upon the researcher
The starting point for this sort of academic scrutiny has been the question whether the language used in the legal argumentation is ubiquitous or whether it displays characteristic features that contradict the thesis about homogeneous globalized legal argumentation that is rendered with the help of essentially equivalent argumentative speech acts
Summary
Law as research subject becomes truly challenging when the application of a legal statute in a particular case, which is dominated by diverging opinions about its content, is at stake. The starting point for this sort of academic scrutiny has been the question whether the language used in the legal argumentation is ubiquitous or whether it displays characteristic features that contradict the thesis about homogeneous globalized legal argumentation that is rendered with the help of essentially equivalent argumentative speech acts (cf Galdia 2014: 341) This question is important for the development of comparative research into non-European legal argumentation that is undertaken in Europe and by Europeans. The complexity of the argumentative structures that will be analysed below concerns the use of interpretive devices in the argumentative text samples They are doubtless multiple, yet for the purposes of this study the main stress will be laid upon interrelated argumentative devices such as fairness, equity, justice and the rule of law. Jurists value them highly as they regularly assume that reference to such meta-arguments contributes to the solution of legal problems in situations where argumentative deadlocks, or ties in the Dworkinian sense (cf. Dworkin 1977: 359), emerge in fundamental debates about the content of rights
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