Legal Semiotics Research Articles

An Appalled Ghost Guiding Readers Across Semiotic Fault Lines: The Contribution of Literature to the Appreciation of Legal Change

Abstract What are the conditions for meaning-making in intertextuality? The article explores what the relational dynamics of (legal) transtextuality can reveal about the semiotic hierarchies that govern them. The interest in these relational dynamics goes beyond the specific relations between texts captured by the hypo-/hyper-text relation. Rather, it embraces the inner conditions of meaning-making in transtextuality across multiple texts. Shifts in the underlying semiotic hierarchies can be tracked within each (legal) field, but the article turns to literature to explore the potential of intertextuality in exposing the transformative dynamics of various legal fields underneath the shifting semiotic hierarchies. Legal studies have variously investigated these shifting semiotic hierarchies, often resorting to the spectrum imposition/prestige (Sacco 1991) the article thus looks into the intertextuality of a literary text and what it can contribute to the analysis, beyond the spectrum. Egypt in the 19th century witnessed major legal transformations (Fahmy 2018; Hilāl 2011; Peters 2020). Just as major, however, were the transformations in legal discourse to accommodate a new vocabulary of ‘modern’ law, often drawing from Islamic law (Parolin 2016). The dynamic relations between alternative legal discourses and their semiotic hierarchies almost imperceptibly transformed over the course of the century, but by the end of the century these hierarchies were nearly entirely redrawn, and Islamic legal discourse had to be characterised or adjectivised as ‘Islamic’ (Parolin 2015). The article thus considers one of the canonical works of late 19th century Egyptian literature, Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī’s What ʿĪsá bin Hishām Told Us (1898–1901). In it, the author describes with irony the shock and tribulations of the ghost of a mid-19th century personality in his encounter with late 19th century Egypt. Al-Muwayliḥī’s is however a brilliant fictional device to stage al-Muwayliḥī’s own shock and the shock of late 19th century Egyptians at the transformations of the country in a few decades. His humourous account precisely begins with changes in law and its enforcement agencies. Not only does legal discourse often capture the enormity of these legal transformations, but also how other elements of legal semiotics witness to far-reaching transformations that cause the ghost much tribulation, on top of the shock.

Translation, Intercultural Dialogue and the Mediation of Legal Semiotics

AbstractContemporary meta-dogmatic legal discourse has frequently mobilized the signifier “translation”, in different stages and to face diverse problems ─ the multidirectional interactions between legal language and ordinary language, the plural network of (national and international, state and non-state) legal orders, the dialectics between presupposed legal materials and practical controversies, the intersubjective place of the judge as the impartial third, the invention of exemplarity as concreteness ─ always however with decisive projections in the understanding or experiencing of juridicalness (its aspirations, categories and limits). The purpose of this paper is to explore the claims to inter-semioticity which the mobilization of this signifier and the plurality of its contexts of meaning and performance seem to construct. This means, on the one hand, to resume the dialogue with Boyd White (justice as translation) and François Ost (le droit comme traduction). It also means, on the other hand, returning to the counterpoint between translation and tradition which MacIntyre’s narrativism exemplarily proposes (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?), this time to discuss the relevance of treating Law (a certain Law) as a cultural artifact, i.e. as a non-universal (culturally plausible and civilizationally moulded) answer to the universal (anthropologically necessary) problem of the institutionalization of a social order (law as a form of life, as a project and as a tradition). With an unexpected helping hand coming from Greimassian’s semio-narrative, this means also asking if translation (or the ethics of humility it celebrates) can actually be experienced, in our limit-situation, as the resource (if not the place or the environment) of a plausible intercultural dialogue.

Contributions to the Legal Semiotics of Facial Recognition Systems: Live Music, Digital Technologies, and the Display of Power

The use of facial recognition systems in concerts provides a perfect pretext to semiotically discuss the role of the face in contemporary culture, identifying different strategies and axiologies (systems of values). In his visionary essay Bruits (“noises”) from 1977, the French thinker Jacques Attali establishes a close connection between music and power and locates it in the site of the collective unfolding of music: the concert hall. Following this hint, the article reconstructs the current debate on facial recognition systems in the music business, with a particular focus on concerts and festivals. The different positions (of musicians, authorities, and professionals) are outlined (some are openly in favor, others openly against), key moments are identified (Beyoncé’s concert in Cardiff, 2017; Jacky Cheung’s in Nanchang, 2018; Taylor Swift’s at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 2018; the “banfacialrecognition.com” campaign launched in 2019; the case of Barbara Hart at Brandi Carlile’s show at the Madison Square Garden, 2022) and, finally, the issue is framed within the broader debate about the face as an indexical marker of presence, identity, and humanity (the contrast between Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and American sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton is addressed).

Unveiling the Law as a System of Signs: A Multidimensional Review of Legal Semiotics

Unveiling the Law as a System of Signs: A Multidimensional Review of Legal Semiotics

Legal Semiotics, Globalization and Governance

Legal Semiotics, Globalization and Governance

Legal Semiotics

The article reveals the concept of semiotics and the stages of its formation, as well as the semiotics of law; some concepts of semiotic-legal researches are analyzed; a forecast is given from the point of view of the application of semiotics of law in the future.

Development of European electoral and referendum law

The purpose of the article is to study European electoral and referendum law. In order to achieve it, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: disclosure of the nature of European electoral and referendum law; analysis of existing European legal standards in this field; highlighting the trends and regularities of the development of European electoral and referendum law in modern conditions. The methodological basis of the research is general scientific methods, in particular, dialectical, systemic, synthesis method, etc., and special legal (comparative-legal, historical-legal, formal-logical, structural-functional, legal semiotics, etc. .) methods of scientific knowledge. Their combination made it possible to comprehensively analyze the essence and peculiarities of European electoral and referendum law, to find out the trends and prospects of their development in modern conditions. With the creation of an extensive system of international legal standards of the universal and regional (mostly European) levels, which guarantee the rights of citizens to participate in elections and referendums, the active functioning of the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the EU, the traditional democratic institutions of elections and referendums are marked by significant modernization and standardization. Along with the development of electoral and referendum law and relevant legislation at the domestic levels, the formation of European electoral and referendum law is observed. Undoubtedly, thorough studies of their nature and essence, subject-functional and other characteristics, mechanisms of implementation of existing European legal standards in this field, etc., are necessary. The risks and threats, associated with armed aggression against Ukraine, and the re-creation of classic institutions of people's power, for the improvement of which the efforts of democratic states and, in recent decades, international organizations have been concentrated, force the development of effective tools for countering and preventing manipulation of elections and referenda, establishing responsibility for such acts, increasing universally binding (normative) acts, along with "soft law" acts in this area

Semiotics, language, and law: the linguistic turn in Western jurisprudence

Abstract In the latter half of the 20th century, with the development of philosophy studies, Western jurisprudence also witnessed a linguistic turn in its field. A series of academic schools appeared consecutively, such as the school of semantic analysis, the school of new rhetoric, the school of legal interpretation, and the school of structural semiotics. Their analytical paradigms, which were skeptical of the views of legal languages in traditional theories of jurisprudence, are interdisciplinary and multidimensional in nature and characteristics. Normally, there are three methods used in the linguistic turn of Western jurisprudence, that is, the method of symbolic restoration, the method of structural and functional analysis, and the method of legal hermeneutics. Promoted by the linguistic turn, two traditions of legal semiotics also developed. One is the legal theory based on Greimasian semiotics, and the other is based on Peircean semiotics. The linguistic turn in jurisprudence still represents a breakthrough and innovation in the paradigm of legal theoretical studies, as it leads to a re-examination of language, which is no longer treated as a tool but as a philosophical afterthought in relation to the human being.

The Global Regulation of "Fake News" in the Time of Oxymora: Facts and Fictions about the Covid-19 Pandemic as Coincidences or Predictive Programming?

The beginning of the twenty-first century saw an apparent change in language in public discourses characterised by the rise of so-called “essentially oxymoronic concepts”, i.e., mainly oxymora and paradoxes. In earlier times, these rhetorical figures of speech were largely reserved for the domain of literature, the arts or mysticism. Today, however, many new technologies and other innovations are contributing to their rise also in the domains of science and of law. Particularly in law, their inherent contradictory quality of combining apparently antagonistic suppositions challenges the traditional dualistic mode of reasoning and binary logic. As reflected in terms like fake news, alternative facts or conspiracy theories, these concepts are seen as a threat to the rule of law and legal certainty and have been described as harbingers of an age of disinformation or post-truth. The challenge posed by these apparently contradictory concepts requires a closer look at the premises that guide our legal thinking and a more integrated theory of the senses and their role in law, as captured by the terms “legal synaesthesia” and “legal semiotics”. It also calls for an inquiry into the mind’s functioning generally and how it processes information in the creative process of decision making, linking thoughts and actions as well as facts and fictions. Based on the qualification of “fake news” as an oxymoron, this article critically examines the deficiencies in a dichotomous distinction between fact and fiction exemplified by information about the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) in an attempt to clarify the principal issues for a global regulatory debate regarding “fake news”.

Особливості відповідальності за порушення права на інформацію, безпеки журналістів

The purpose of the article is to analyze the legal framework for prosecuting journalists for violations of the right to information and security in Ukraine. This presupposes the setting of the following tasks: to investigate the existing legal framework of Ukraine in this area; describe the guarantees of ensuring the right to information, including the right to public information, the safety of journalists in carrying out their professional activities; to find out the essence of the phenomenon of defamation, the practice of foreign states to establish responsibility for this act; to reveal the features of liability for violation of the right to information, security of journalists in Ukraine, cases of exemption from liability for violation of information legislation; formulate proposals for improving the institution of responsibility for violating the right to information, security of journalists in Ukraine. The methodological basis of the study are, in particular, comparative law, system, structural and functional, legal semiotics and other methods of scientific knowledge. Scientific novelty. The study based on the analysis of the existing legal framework and doctrinal approaches allowed to identify the features of liability for violation of the right to information, security of journalists in Ukraine. The main types of such liability are: administrative, disciplinary, civil and criminal, but not unified and contained in a number of legislative cases of exemption from liability for violations of legislation in this area. Conclusions. Proposals for improving the legal framework and law enforcement practice of the institute of responsibility for violating the right to information and security of journalists in Ukraine have been formulated. It is expedient to establish responsibility for acts of defamation, to increase the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution for offenses committed against journalists in connection with their professional activities; protection of the activities of citizen journalists; strengthening the responsibility for committing criminal offenses against journalists, determining the status of journalists, journalistic activities, the legal status of online media and online media journalists in accordance with European standards. Specificity is the responsibility for violating the right to information, safety of journalists in carrying out their professional activities in areas of hostilities, emergencies, in the territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. In general, the activities of the legislator, the system of prosecutors, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and the National Police of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigation and other authorized bodies, with the participation of the public, should be consistent and timely. Keywords: right to information, security of journalists, professional activity, responsibility, defamation, legislation.

Vico\u2019s \u201cScienza Nuova\u201d: Sematology and Thirdness in the Law

Is it the task of legal semiotics or the legal philosophers to define legal semiotics? For the philosopher of law, the question recalls the distinction between philosophers’ philosophy of law and legal scholars’ philosophy of law. The thesis that the paper argues is that a semiotic legal perspective can also be sought from the analysis of anthropological knowledge on the origin of the social bond and society, implying a social and institutional theory of the mind. In the first paragraph, the search for a different kind of rationality emerges from a semiotician, Jürgen Trabant, who analyses semiotically the thought of a rhetorician and philosopher of law, Giambattista Vico. In the second paragraph, the anthropological notion of social bond emerges from the debate on the relationship between the idea of the gift and that of exchange. In the third paragraph, the analysis of the legal notion of thirdness recognizes the central role of myth and fiction in the configuration of the civil world and sign, returning to Vico’s critical view of the philosophy of language as an institution of society.

“EL JOVEN RESPONSABLE DE SU CASTIGO. SU TRÁNSITO EN EL ESTADO PENAL”. ANALISIS DEL DISCURSO PROFESIONAL COMO PARTE DEL DISPOSITIVO PENAL JUVENIL

RESUMEN En este trabajo, analizamos los enunciados de profesionales que intervienen en la administración del castigo penal juvenil en la provincia de Córdoba, Argentina, desde 2011. Desde presupuestos de la sociolingüística y la semiótica jurídica landowskiana, reconocemos los informes psicológicos producidos en el contexto de una prisión juvenil como expresiones del discurso experto que interpelan un joven responsable de su castigo. La conclusión que desprendemos establece un posicionamiento reflexivo en relación con las propiedades comunes a los discursos de la responsabilización. Su aparición regular en el campo judicial instituye y repone, recursivamente, una norma sobre el joven reprochable y reasegura para el yo-enunciador experto un doble estatus: pericial y jurídico.

SEMIOTIC AND LEGAL ANALYSIS OF THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF RUSSIAN NATIONAL FLAGS

The present research was provoked by high necessity in the analysis of the role of historic memory in interpretation of contemporary state symbols and legal regulation of their use in different political, ideological and cultural contexts. The legal regulation of the national flags, including historical ones, cannot be properly done without taking into consideration their symbolic value for different groups of population, sharing different political views and attitudes to the past. Semiotic aspects are also important for judicial and administrative practice, which should be aimed, as well as the legislation in this area, at formation of the common political identity and should not lead to separation instead of unification. Visual representation of flags as symbols, which can transmit variety of meanings is understood differently by different audiences, is also a means to show how contexts may affect self-identification of the nation. The methodological basis for the research comprises works in legal semiotics, hermeneutics and visual communication. This is accounted for the fact that legal regulation of flags as state symbols cannot be investigated without understanding of their interpretation in non-legal discourses, such as vexillology, heraldry, history and political science. Semiotics unites legal and non-legal discourses and serves as a basis for interdisciplinary research in symbols, their use and interpretation. The authors benefited from the ideas developed in the works by Yu. Lotman, S.A. Knowlton and M. Leone.The article presents the semiotic analysis of three flags in their historical perspective: the black-yellow-white flag of the Russian Empire, the Soviet red banner and the contemporary white-blue-red national flag of democratic Russia. In the context of multiple connotations caused by demonstration of the imperial flag and of the red flag, the attempts to provide them with the special status in the current Russian legislation have been analyzed. The national white-blue-red flag may also be used as an official symbol of the nation and as unofficial symbol of different political movements. The evolution of its visual representation with time is explored. Having been placed into semiotic discourse, visual representation of national flags shows that image of an official flag may receive its own meaning for the audience or different types of audiences, and that, as Steven A. Knowlton put it, "symbols may have meanings beyond just representing the signified, which are often assigned by an official body". The thesis of overlapping, intertwined and sometimes confused meanings of flags as state symbols, which Massimo Leone put forward, should be borne in mind when it comes to legal regulation of the use of flags, responsibility for their desecration or misuse. Judicial practice should take into account the meaning of the signified, or a message, conveyed by the user of flags and the aim of the legal rule. Without attention to specific nature of the symbols the law implementing practice will be apt to mistakes and inadequate interpretation. Contemporary legal regulation of the use of the national flag includes provisions of the Constitution, administrative and criminal law. Their application in practice confronts with the lack of legal certainty, which makes the interpretation of these provisions even more complicated.

Towards a semiotic theory of style in law: a Peircean approach

AbstractThis paper discusses the promises and limits of a Peircean semiotic approach to the concept of style in law. It does so in two steps: first (1) by identifying the place of style within the structure of law as a system of signs, then (2) by conceptualising the link between law and style in the thought of C.S. Peirce and highlighting some of the insights from a Peircean take on legal semiotics that may contribute to our understanding of the role of style in making meaning in law. It is argued that, for a Peircean analysis of law, three levels can be distinguished, from the ‘surface structure’ down to the ‘deep structure’. It is at the middle level (that of the ‘basic structure’) that a semiotic approach can yield coherent insights in terms of style, by examining the symbols and metaphors that make for the expressibility of ‘habits’, namely experience-based patterns of action and interpretation.

Relasi Konseptual Oposisi Makna Sumbangan Korporasi Pada Partai Politik Dalam Semiotic Square

Legal language can be utilised as a means to manipulate interests. A specific approach is needed to identify the potential distortion behind the text of positive legal norms. This study applies a legal semiotics approach. Through the semiotic square model, the potential for distortion at the conceptual level can be brought up to the surface. The result of the interpretation shows that Article 35 paragraph (1) letter c of Law Number 2 of 2011 on Political Parties has the potential to be a means for corporations to infiltrate their interests. The opposing conceptual relations of meanings that can come up include: the corporate contributions to political parties which can be used as a means to influence the economic policies that would only favour the corporations; demanding the regulations that only protect, facilitate and benefit corporate activities; as well as investment field for the corporations to request the licensing and project or tender facilities. In the end, political parties do not have the sovereignty, independency and integrity.

El tiempo del discurso jurídico y el relato prescriptivo. ”Nomos” históricos y “Nomos” procesales

Este ensayo informa del estado de los debates en el campo de la Semiótica Jurídica sobre dos temas: el carácter narrativo de la práctica característica del discurso jurídico, dirigido a la adjudicación del juez, la sentencia; y la función argumentativa que aparece en el horizonte de ese carácter narrativo. Reconocemos detrás de estos temas un problema común sobre el que la semiótica debe detenerse: las operaciones estratégicas que las adjudicaciones enmascaran reenvían a regímenes narrativos donde se sancionan normas sobre el deber ser de las historias relatadas y sobre el campo discursivo donde los relatos emergen.This paper exposes current debates in the field of Legal Semiotics about two topics: the narrative nature of the practice of social discourse, oriented to adjudication, and the argumentative function that appears on the horizon of this narrative nature. We recognize one common problem behind these topics, and believe that Semiotics must pay attention: the strategic operations that the adjudications conceal remit to narrative regimes where rules are prescribed on normative ideal of story told and the discursive field where storytellings emerge.

Applying legal narratives. Some comments on Bernard Jackson’s sociolinguistic approach in legal semiotics

In the article some applications of the concept of legal nar­rative are undertaken in the perspective of Bernard Jackson’s legal semiotics. The analysis are developed in the perspective of Polish social and economical changes of recent decades. The leitmotif is constituted by remarks on sociolinguistic aspects of teaching legal narratives in changing reality. In this context a notion of “legal grapholect” is introduced to discuss possible influence of “deep layer” of legal language on evolving Polish law­yers’ language and vernacular. Additionally, issues of semiotic group of lawyers and legal register are discussed on the basis of the sociolinguistic paradigm. Reasoning is enriched by remarks of possible merger of Jackson’s legal semiotics and Ch. Perelman’s theory of legal argumentation.

Lavascape: legal spectacle at Kīlauea

ABSTRACTIn considering the theme “Exploring Legal Discourse: A Sociosemiotic (Re)Construction,” this paper examines the symbolic relationship between law and chaos in the changing landscape of Kīlauea Volcano on Hawai’i Island. The socio-legal dimensions of this relationship provide insight into law’s project of governance in the dynamic natural environment. Most recently, in the summer of 2018, lava spouted and then flowed from Kīlauea in over twenty-four fissures which opened up within two heavily populated residential subdivisions. Law's response to the ensuing chaos provides keen insight into the epistemological positionality of law toward nature. In an attempt to tame this enlivened lavascape of persons and lava, law asserts authority over the spectacle in the areas of sightseeing, access, and mapping. In other words, the legal spectacle of lava eruption is an attempt to jurisdictionally frame the legal imagination of human risk in this dynamic landscape through legal semiotics, legal materiality, and legal topology. However, as this paper will explore, the source of chaos is actually law itself. Attempts to manage chaos are actually attempts to manage human nature as visitation to the erupting volcanic environment is ultimately beyond law's complete control. In a larger sense, this study of Kīlauea's lavascape as a constructed legal spectacle illustrates the phenomenological framing of law's incomplete jurisdiction over kinetic environments.

The semiosis of legal discourse. From the mute code to the adjudication game

Semiotics has generally been inclined to analyze the semiosis of legal discourse, accepting the organizing grammars of the field of legal discourse as valid and empowering. This theoretical position is inscribed in the same seat that gives place to its object: legal discourse. Legal Semiotics (social process of production of legal meanings) is confused with Semiotics of Law (disciplinary process that exclusively concerns professionals in charge of ciphering and deciphering the dogma’s dictionary). It is necessary, from the perspective of Critical Social Se-miotics, to build an analytics of the semiotics of legal discursivity that does not divert its atten-tion from these grammars and the arguments that refer to them. That is to say, it is necessary to have useful tools in order to reconstruct the event of legal discourse, assigning the unsaid rules that appear withdrawn in those organizing grammars and argumentation acts that are recognizable in the arguments. Here we call these rules the mute code of legal discourse and we take up, from that point, our critique of the Hart’s category of adjudication, overlaying it, on this occasion, with a counterpoint category: the adjudication game.

The construction of access: the eugenic precedent of the Americans with Disabilities Act

This paper interrogates the language of the legal precedents of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and their function, including the 1891 Immigration Law and the series of ‘ugly laws’ that spanned from the late nineteenth century until the early twentieth century. Legislative language is used to construct and deploy static definitions of normalcy and disability, relying on ‘objective’ evidence couched in medical and scientific discourse. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the legislative precedents of the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) that were motivated by the eugenicist imperative to strengthen the image of a productive and robust nation. I begin by outlining eugenicist logic and demonstrate how it functions within a semiotic system. Then, I will introduce the process by which eugenicist logic works within legal semiotics. Lastly, I will provide three examples of how this process functions in the legislative language and implementation of the 1891 Immigration Act, the ‘ugly laws’ and the ADAAA. Ultimately, I will demonstrate how all three provide evidence of a pattern of semiotic systems that pathologize human difference and manages these differences so as to segregate and disenfranchise in the name of nationalism.