Legal Semiotics Research Articles

Response from Barton Beebe

My hope is that Alan Audi's important and necessary intervention represents a turning point in “cultural property argument.” In Parts I and II of his critique, Audi expertly uses the tools of “legal semiotics” to do exactly what those tools were designed to do: demystify the language game of legal argument to reveal the “irreducibly antinomal” and dialectical nature of its maxims and countermaxims. Audi quite persuasively sets forth a disturbing vision of a discourse that functions by its nature not so much to generate meaning and normative force as to suppress them, all so that the status quo remains undisturbed. Just as the fact that the English are unlikely to give up the Elgin Marbles anytime soon “suggests a kind of idle or recreational character to cultural property argument,” so too Audi's critique. Indeed, stripped of its legal features, the field of cultural property argument does look “rather barren.”

Rejoinder by Alan Audi

I am grateful for the responses to the piece. With admirable concision, Professor Beebe has summarized the promise and perils of legal semiotics and the challenges ahead. He is right to note that any “moral, ethical, and political” argument can be broken down with the same tools used to break down legal argument; but one might be tempted to add that having done away with law's aura of authority and diminished the persuasive force of legal arguments may be reward enough for now, at least in the realm of cultural property argument.

A Semiotics of Cultural Property Argument

This article applies the tools of legal semiotics to examine the terms, modalities, and conventions of legal argument in the cultural property context. In a first instance, the author re-enacts Duncan Kennedy's study of recurrent patterns within legal argument to illustrate the highly structured nature of most cultural property argument. This mapping exercise shows how legal concepts draw their meaning in part from their place within a broader linguistic system, and as a result cannot by themselves form an adequate basis for ethical positions. Following this, the pervasive Elgin Marbles controversy is shown to resemble a myth (in Roland Barthes's sense of the term) behind which a series of value judgments and support systems are embedded into cultural property argument. The conclusion presents a number of observations sketching a framework centered on restitution as a starting point for resolution of cultural property disputes.Acknowledgements: I am grateful for the many helpful comments received on previous versions of this piece, especially from Ali Wick, Lama Abu Odeh, and Alex Bauer. A special thank you to Natalia and Sofia for their support.

Living legal fictions: constituting the state or submerging the signifier?

This is an inquiry into the ways the state is constituted as an effective legal fiction. It is based on the premise that the state was not constituted, once and for all, some three centuries ago (as Bourdieu suggests) but that the existence of the state relies on continuing legal and social processes. The focus is on the translation from the legal to the social, specifically the semiotic interaction between law, space and daily life in the dynamics of this on-going mise en scène. This requires re-thinking a number of semiotic issues: first, Lefebvre’s challenge to a semiotics which neglects the place of the material (body, space) and, second, a challenge to Lefebvre’s assertions that the state operates in a realm of freedom in switching ‘at will’ between codes. Third, it is possible to question the conditions by which the state operates as a ‘floating signifier’, which maintains its domination by overwhelming us with its excess meanings. The inquiry proceeds by analysing the legal semiotics of space in different settings: the axis as an expression of legal and state power, from the courtroom to the capital city (Rome, Washington, Canberra), and street names with legal referents (Montréal and Mexico City, in addition to the above). After considering these self conscious attempts at meaning-making, the article concludes that the legal constitution of the state in urban space is not determined by a single wilful semiotic regime, but (taking insights from de Certeau) is contingent upon the interpretations and enactments of people who use the spaces. Except in the controlled environments of the courtroom and the planned capital city, everyday life is continually reconstituting the meanings of law and the state.

Hints and guesses: Legal modes of semio-logical reasoning

Legal semiotics is an internationally proliferated subfield of general semiotics. The three-step principles of Peirce’s semiotic logic are the three leading categories: firstness, secondness and thirdness, grounded on the reverse principles of logic: deduction, induction and — Peirce’s discovery — abduction. Neither induction nor abduction can provide a weaker truth claim than deduction. Abduction occurs in intuitive conclusions regarding the possibility of backward reasoning, contrary to the system of law. Civil-law cultures possess an abstract deductive orientation, governed by the rigidity of previous written law, whereas the actual fragility of a common-law system with cases and precedents inclines to induction, orienting its habituality (habits) in moral time and space. Customary law gives credit to abductive values: relevant sentiments, beliefs and propositions are upgraded to valid reasoning. The decision-making by U.S. case law and English common-law is characterized as decision law with abductive undertones.

Introduction: The Perspectives of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School on Legal Semiotics

Introduction: The Perspectives of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School on Legal Semiotics

Language and the Law

The study of language and law incorporates many subtopics: law and literature, linguistics and semantics, legal drafting, opinion writing, advocacy style, law as literature, statutory interpretation, legal dictionaries, information processes, and even courtroom translators, among others. However, our conference's subject matter was much more limited and only three of those categories are covered in this bibliography: (1) Legal Semiotics and Critical Legal Theory, (2) Plain Language, and (3) Legal Dictionaries.

Legal system: can one speak about secondary modeling system in law?

The essay examines possible affinities betweenTartu-Moscow school of cultural semiotics andlegal semiotics. The introduction briefly setsout a historical dimension of the ideologicalintegration of Tartu-Moscow semiotics (inbroader context Tartu semiotics) into thegeneral framework of legal semiotics. It arguesthat there was a `real' historical mediationbetween the members of Tartu-Moscow schoolsemiotic circle and legal scholars from Tartu.The acceptance of such a bridging link betweenlegal academic community and semioticians couldgive further impetus to construction of aspecial model of `Tartu legal semiotics'. The development of Tartu-Moscow `legalsemiotics' could be illustrated by theimplementation of a special explanatoryframework, which provide insights into the wayTartu semiotics wedded to a legal positivistphilosophy. Particular importance of such aframework (model of legal semiotics) rest onfact that the academic ideology of Tartu-Moscowschool reflects and conforms to all thehistorical peculiarities of the Soviet epoch(these peculiarities should be always kept inmind). In order to adopt Tartu-Moscow semioticsto legal semiotics, semiotic theory ofTartu-Moscow school must be recast in terms oflegal semiotics The dissemination of semioticstudies in late Soviet epoch enabled them to belinked to various theoretical enquiries intothe domain of legal methodology, ontology andepistemology. This essay puts a specialemphasis on the notion of `secondary modelingsystem' as a natural pattern for `systemacity'within the universe of law. However, in orderto understand the semiotic value of `legalsystem' it is necessary to have recourse toother systems. Therefore, this paper examinesdifferent system dimensions of law: fromgeneral notion of system and theory ofautopoetic system to sign systems. The possible synthesis of logical, sociologicaland semiotic approaches to the system of lawopens a wider multidisciplinary perspective;moreover the need for multidisciplinarysynthesis is pertinent to contemporaryphilosophical concerns. The main analyticaltask of essay is to provide an answer to aquestion of whether core semiotic concept of a`secondary modeling system' (amongst otherconcepts like `boundary', `semiosphere',`culture' and `text') is capable of enrichingand clarifying legal philosophy in a widerperspective and the semiotic account of law inparticular. A positive answer to the questionwill favor the further tight integration ofTartu-Moscow semiotic concepts into the domainof legal semiotics.

Freedom of Expression in the Dutch Constitution: Censorship and Sense Construction

Models of communication,frequently used in legal semiotics, offeran analytic framework for the relationshipbetween legal rules on the one hand andcorresponding behaviour on the other.Semiotic models seek to clarify(un)successful legal communication; theytry to reveal the processes ofinterpretation and sense construction. Theessence of these models is that thesubstantive meaning of a rule can (orcannot) be transmitted in a `flow model'of information. The models are based upona linear causality of ruleinformation. In this paper, the processesof sense construction are described,taking the freedom of expression, as laiddown in Article 7 of the DutchConstitution, as an example. Although thetext of Article 7 remained unalteredsince its first drafting in 1815, itssubstantive meaning has changedfundamentally. The transformation wascaused by complex processes that tookplace in social practice. These complexprocesses with respect to Article 7 arecompared with the transformation processesanalysed with respect to Article 96 of theDutch Constitution, published in anearlier paper. A comparison between bothArticles leads to the question: `Do weneed to construct an analytical model forlegal communication in whichreciprocal relations between legislatorand citizens are highlighted?' On thebasis of the two case studies, whichdescribe the influence of social practiceon the substantive meaning of the(textually unaltered) Articles, we have toanswer the question in the affirmative.

Great Expectations: AI and Law as an Issue for Legal Semiotics

Trying to build computerprograms that can assist the practicing lawyerin solving concrete cases is scientificallychallenging and financially attractive. So far,the practical results of such endeavors arerather modest, but that may change. This paperexamines the possible impact in the future ofadvanced advisory software on the semantics andpragmatics of law. Two kinds of computerprograms are discussed, viz., expertsystems and dialogue models. It is argued thatsuch systems may affect adjudication in someimportant ways, and that jurists shouldtherefore develop a more critical attitudetoward the use of such systems. Furthermore, itis argued that the widespread idea that the useof computers leads to more objectivity is onthe whole mistaken. As to the role of computersin legal decision making, the final question isnot: can they do it? But: do we want to let them doit? All this does not mean, however, thatjurists should turn away from ArtificialIntelligence and Law. On the contrary,developments in that field can be highlystimulating for legal theory and legal semiotics.

The Semiotics of Civil Rights in Consumer Society: Race, Law, and Food

Cooking and constitutionalism. Food and racial equity. I intend the juxtaposition to be jarring, even humorous. I would like to view it as a subtle indication of a historical trend in which central aspects of legal memory have been repressed from contemporary civic practice and important intellectual questions, concerning semiotics in consumer society, have been neglected in mainstream legal scholarship. As I will explain, the story of Ollie's barbecue suggests not only that cooking and constitutionalism are intricately linked, but also that the expansion of postwar economic life formed a material basis for this hidden bond. Considering the history of Ollie's thus can both illuminate the deep historical meaning of the Civil Rights Act, and also point the way toward a more general field of research, the development of what might be called a legal semiotics of consumption.

Legal Education, Institutional Skills and European Union Opinions

A cluster of issues in the context of legal education shows the importance of legal semiotics: new forms of citizenship, new ideas on e-education, the recent design of e-educational programs that focus the features of institutional life, the concept of a learning are this cluster's elements. Opinions of European Union Institutions stimulate to conceive modern society in the light of these issues. It leads to the formulation of a fifth freedom in the Union, (after freedom of persons and goods, services and capital) which is the freedom to participate in a learning society. The practice of that freedom leads to developing e-educational programs for institutional skills.

Comparative Legal Semiotics and the Divided Brain: Are We Producing Half-Brained Lawyers?

lus est art aequi et boni. These are the time-honored, opening words of the Roman Corpus luris (534 A.D.). They mean: Law is the art/craft (or craft/art) of the equitable and the good. Though the Corpus luris is the basis of Western legal thinking (first filtered down and then promoted by the Catholic Church2) this meeting of art and craft is largely forgotten-only the craft aspect persisted and took the upper hand: the lawyer as the craftsman. This is astonishing not only in view of the Corpus Iuris but also in view of the fact that so many lawyer/poets characterized the Western legal world.3 It began with

The Declaration of War in the Dutch Constitution and Models of Legal Communication

Models of communication,frequently used in legal semiotics, offer ananalytic framework for the relationship betweenlegal rules on the one hand and correspondingsocial behaviour on the other. Semiotic modelsseek to clarify (un)successful legalcommunication; they try to reveal the processesof interpretation and sense construction. Inthis paper, these processes are described,taking Article 96 of the Dutch Constitution asan example. Although the text of Article 96 hasremained nearly unchanged, its substantivemeaning has changed fundamentally. Thebackground and development of the `declarationof war', as laid down in Article 96, areanalysed and fully elaborated. It is concludedthat the classical models of communication,largely based upon the idea of the existence ofa linear relationship between rule and conduct,hardly correspond with the complex processes asdescribed in the analysis of Article96 Communication between rule and practice isobviously more than a one-waycausality, in which rule information `flows'from sender (legislator) to receiver (citizen).The institutional model of communication,developed by Ruiter, offers a different approach.

Armed Conflicts, Images of Law and Legal Semiotics

Armed Conflicts, Images of Law and Legal Semiotics

Securitization and Judicial Review: A Semiotic Perspective on the Relation Between the Security Council and International Judicial Bodies

This article examines therelation between the Security Council andinternational judicial bodies. The first partexplains, on the basis of linguistic theoriesof international security, the new role assumedby the Security Council after the Cold War. Thesecond part analyses, on the basis of insightsborrowed from legal semiotics, the position ofinternational judicial organs vis-a-vis theSecurity Council (especially the InternationalCourt of Justice and the Tribunals for Rwandaand the former Yugoslavia). The article arguesthat international judicial bodies havedeveloped ways of checking the power of theSecurity Council, which go beyond thetraditional modes of judicial review. Legalsemiotics offers the tools necessary tounderstand these countervailing activities andthus the relation between internationaljudicial bodies and the Security Council ingeneral.

The unnamed Third; Roberta Kevelson's legal semiotics and the development of international law

The unnamed Third; Roberta Kevelson's legal semiotics and the development of international law

A note on legal semiotics

This is an electronic version of an article published in Social Semiotics. © Copyright 1995 Taylor & Francis; Social Semiotics is available online at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10350330.asp

On Scholarly Developments in Legal Semiotics

On Scholarly Developments in Legal Semiotics

Semiotics in the Trial of Jurisprudence

In the book under review, the theoretical apparatus of legal semiotics is wielded to give an account of legal adjudication in the common law trial. Looking back at what has been written here, it can be seen that the review takes up three contexts: the machinations of jurisprudence, the detour of legal theory into linguistic meta-recits or tall tales, and the genre of legal academic writing. The review argues that what is not at stake in Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence is the enterprise of jurisprudence. As will become clear, in order to make that argument, it would not be necessary to understand what the mots clefs of semiotics mean. As Bernard Jackson asks of his own book, 'Is it intended to be taken seriously, or is it play, or even a joke?' (p.5). Jackson's answer is that, apart from a playful remark here and there, the general intention is serious. My own answer would be to ask whether it is necessary to choose.