Abstract
This review discusses Harold Berman’s, Law and Language, published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. It locates this short book in relation to Berman’s extensive body of publications in international and comparative law, and asks what contribution the book’s recent, posthumous publication (40 years after Berman wrote the first draft and 7 years since his death) can make to current debates over approaches to forensic linguistics. Particular attention is given to Berman’s conceptualisation of law as a ‘living language’, as well as to his coining of the term ‘communification’ to describe the value of legal-lay dialogue in building a public sense of community and in sustaining the legitimacy of legal systems.
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References
Conley, John, and William O’Barr. 2005. Just Words: Law, language and power, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gibbons, John. 2003. Forensic linguistics: An introduction to language in the justice system. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Durant, A. Harold Berman: Law and Language. Int J Semiot Law 28, 427–432 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-014-9389-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-014-9389-2